Kristen Honey

Can we create win-win options for marine conservation and fisheries management? If so, how do we successfully implement, monitor, and assess marine ecosystem-based management approaches? Kristen Honey investigates these questions as a member of IPER's fourth class. Her academic passion is the use of integrative fisheries management to bridge the gaps between regulators, scientists, and fishermen. Her key research interest is the development of quantitative tools using mathematics, economics and population ecology to guide fisheries management and marine conservation.  With Prof. Fiorenza Micheli at Hopkins Marine Station, Kristen combines fieldwork in nearshore kelp forests with simulation models to characterize coastal dynamics.  She is developing and optimizing sampling designs to efficiently and effectively monitor fish population responses to Central California's existing network of marine reserves.  Her models explicitly incorporate environmental uncertainty and dynamic ocean conditions in order to predict and revise scientific expectations (and, hopefully, public expectations) about what marine reserves can realistically deliver as a fisheries management tool.

In 2005, Kristen completed her Master's Degree at the University of California, Santa Cruz.  Her research focused on the threatened delta smelt (Hypomesus transpacificus), a fish endemic to San Francisco Estuary-Delta, and balancing anadromous fish protection with human water use.  Since beginning her graduate training, Kristen was named a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Science To Achieve Results (STAR) Fellow.  She received another prestigious, three-year award when recognized as one of only 100 students to receive a Stanford Graduate Fellowship in Science and Engineering.  In 2008, Kristen was the only recipient of the Environmental Defense Lokey Fellowship, which will support her fisheries research in collaboration with Dr. Rod Fujita at Environmental Defense Fund (San Francisco).

Kristen comes to Stanford University from Portland, Maine, and the small island community of Long Island, Maine. She completed her undergraduate degree at Stanford in Human Biology in 1997 with an Honor's thesis on introduced mollusks in San Francisco Estuary. As an undergrad, she studied at Hopkins Marine Station and conducted student research as a scientific diver. She worked as a benthic biologist for Dr. Jan Thompson at U.S. Geological Survey (Menlo Park) and as an Oceans Program research assistant at Environmental Defense Fund. Other professional experience includes three years as an Environmental Scientist for Eastern Research Group, Inc. (Lexington, MA); two years as an Environmental Specialist with the San Francisco Estuary Project (SFEP) (Oakland, CA) as a liaison with the CALFED Science Program (Sacramento, CA); and two years as a Fish Ecologist (student researcher) at the John Muir Institute for the Environment, U.C. Davis.