Geoff Shester

Geoff Shester is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Environment and Resources at Stanford University. Before coming to Stanford, he received Highest Honors for his Bachelor’s Degree in both Biology and Environmental Studies at UC Santa Cruz. His undergraduate research topics included the natural history of California, the ecological impacts of global climate change, and the behavioral ecology of amphibians in the Costa Rican cloud forest. As an avid canoeist and wilderness guide, he has designed and led environmental education programs for young men and women in the Monterey Bay and the Canadian wilderness. Upon graduation, Geoff traveled to Anchorage, Alaska to intern at the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council where he worked with communities affected by the oil spill and developed communications materials for the Gulf of Alaska Ecosystem Monitoring and Research Program. He then moved to Juneau, Alaska to transition into a role as an environmental advocate working for the Pacific Regional Office of Oceana, an international marine conservation organization. At Oceana, he integrated biological and economic data to develop and present fishery management policy proposals to protect newly discovered deep sea coral ecosystems from destructive fishing practices along the Pacific coast of North America.

Geoff Shester’s current interdisciplinary research at Stanford is focused on fisheries economics and marine ecology. Building on his foundation in ecology and conservation, his major research topics include economic valuation of ecological services, ocean zoning, alternative systems of ocean governance, and institutional causes of destructive resource use. Focusing on Pacific deep sea coral ecosystems, he is researching the fisheries production functions of marine habitats and how destructive fishing activities like bottom trawling affect their productive capacity. He is combining theoretical and empirical methodologies from ecology and economics to develop frameworks to better understand the interactions between human activities and the marine ecosystem. Through his work at Stanford, Geoff hopes to develop and implement cost-effective policy solutions that are profitable, politically viable, and protect the features of the ocean that make it so productive.