Gina Clementi

 

Gina Clementi is a marine ecologist, and she currently works at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, Florida. She grew up in New Jersey, where she spent her summers fishing the surf and became fascinated by our oceans and the animals that inhabit them. She attended the University of Miami in Florida for her undergraduate degree, then received a Master of Science from Stony Brook University in New York. Her graduate work included projects on the ecology of estuarine predators in temperate bays and artificial reefs in Long Island, New York. Gina’s master’s thesis utilized baited remote underwater video systems (BRUVS) to assess anthropogenic and environmental drivers of reef-associated elasmobranch abundance and diversity, specifically in the Caribbean. After graduate school, she worked as the lab manager for the Predator Ecology & Conservation lab at FIU, where she managed BRUVS, environmental DNA (eDNA), and acoustic tagging studies. Today, Gina works in Dr. Kevin Boswell’s lab at FIU where she works on several marine ecology projects, including an assessment of greater amberjack abundance in the Southeast US and a permit depredation study in the Florida Keys.

 

Gina’s research focuses on the ecology and conservation of marine predators using various non-invasive technologies. Primarily, she has used baited remote underwater videos to assess predator abundance, diversity, behavior, and their drivers. Gina has found that BRUVS in combination with eDNA can uncover the behavior and interactions between marine predators that might go unnoticed by conventional survey methods.

  

Gina loves working in marine outreach and education, especially with local schools and the fishing community in the US and the Caribbean, to share her knowledge of marine predators and the threats they face. She loves to fish, snorkel, and paint the marine critters she encounters in the wild.

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Presentation: Friday, October 7th

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