IFOP researcher is awarded a scholarship from Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources Commission
November 29th, 2022
Developing a krill fishery stock assessment model is Mauricio Mardones’s objective, IFOP researcher and UMAG doctoral student, who was awarded a Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources s Commission’s cholarship(CCAMLR) to carry out his project.
Mauricio Mardones, Fisheries Development Institute (IFOP) researcher was awarded a Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources s Commission’s scholarship (CCAMLR). This scholarship aims to promote young scientists who carry out research in specific areas of interest to the Scientific Committee of the Commission and its working groups participation .
As Mauricio Mardones pointed out, his project objective is to advance quantitative methodologies to understand krill population dynamics and its management approach, which is currently being discussed in the CCAMLR Scientific Commission. “It is a great opportunity to learn more about this important fishery in a high-latitude ecosystem context, and also as a great academic and scientific challenge to rise to,” he said.
“Having the possibility of working with INACH and the Antarctic Department of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, United States (NOAA) researchers is very relevant for my doctoral project, since these groups are developing high-level science. level around krill and its fishery in the Southern Ocean. Having this type of interaction will improve the quality of academic and scientific work, and in turn, would allow me to better understand and contribute to the fisheries management of this important species of the Antarctic ecosystem,” said Mauricio.
Mauricio is doing his doctorate in Antarctic and Sub-Antarctic Sciences at Universidad de Magallanes (UMAG), under academic supervision from researcher PhD César Cárdenas from Chilean Antarctic Institute and BASE Millennium Institute, . This project is developed in the context of Antarctic fisheries, related to aspects of stock assessment, management and climatic context.
The scholarship will be used for participation in meetings (3) of the CCAMLR Working Groups during 2023-2024, one month of work at INACH and two months of internship with researchers from the NOAA Antarctic Department, in La Jolla, California, USA.
“The work that Mauricio intends to do is highly relevant research, it fits perfectly into the discussions that have taken place in the CCAMLR Scientific Committee since 2019, which are related to krill fishery new management strategy. In this sense, for some years the importance of evaluating this strategy once it has been implemented has been discussed and Mauricio, through his expertise in resource evaluation in Chile, was interested in developing this topic,” said Dr. César Cárdenas.
Without a doubt, what Mauricio will do is one of the most relevant topics of the discussions that will take place in the coming years regarding the Working Groups and the discussions of the Scientific Committee in relation to krill management”, said César Cárdenas.
Since 2015, Mauricio Mardones has been a researcher in Resource Evaluation Department and is currently working on benthic and demersal fisheriesmethodological approaches within the department, with an emphasis on conceptualization, exploratory analysis, data visualization and application of integrated models to understand the dynamics of exploited marine populations and thereby provide recommendations for sustainable management.”
IFOP researcher Mauricio Mardones
Photography: I. Milenio BASE/ C. Barrientos
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