Ione Hunt von Herbing

I am an Associate Professor in the Biological Sciences Department at the third largest University in Texas, University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. Recently re-located from the University of Maine, School of Marine Sciences and 3 years as a Program Director in the BIO Directorate at the National Science Foundation, I miss the ocean..so am starting the first Marine Conservation Physiology Laboratory in the US. After all anything is possible in Texas, so I have been told! Trained in algal physiology, economics, oceanography and fish physiology I have made the effort to ignore barriers between fields and explore the frontiers of science when I can.

Our laboratory is dedicated to preserving global marine biodiversity, but our more practical side will be to measure stress caused by anthropogenic forces using physiological tools in fisheries and aquaculture populations. We are developing a mobile kit that we can take out to sea and to coastal farms to evaluate stress responses in aquatic populations. With the threat of ocean acidification and thermal changes, we are already seeing changes in fish population distributions that will drastically alter the ocean ecosystem. Having worked with the cold-water, Arctic and tropical fisheries and the aquaculture industry for over twenty years, I have been witness to profound changes in the natural cycles of the ocean. Moreover, global ocean change threatens our food supply as 30% of our protein is fish protein. Thus, I hope to move forward in ocean sustainability, so that we become better stewards of one of the most precious and non-renewable resources on this planet.