Brooks Earns Award from American Fisheries Society

Congratulations to Johnna Brooks, Biomathematics PhD candidate at North Carolina State University (advised by Jie Cao and Jeffrey Buckel), and NOAA Sea Grant Population Dynamics Fellow, who has been chosen as the recipient this year’s the Berkeley Fellowship Award from the Marine Fisheries Section of the American Fisheries Society (AFS).

According to the AFS, this fellowship was established in 2007 in honor of Steven Berkeley, “a dedicated fisheries scientist with a passionate interest in integrating the fields of marine ecology, conservation biology, and fisheries science to improve fisheries management.”

Growing up in a small fishing village in Eastern North Carolina, Brooks was inspired by her upbringing and aptitude in mathematics to pursue quantitative fisheries biology. Her research supports the conservation and management of spotted seatrout, a species that is both recreationally and commercially important in North Carolina. Brooks says spotted seatrout in this region are unique in that they periodically experience mass mortality events known as cold stun events, which have caused difficulties in effectively managing the spotted seatrout stock.

Brooks’ goal is to improve the stock’s management by incorporating the species’ seasonal population dynamics, particularly these high natural mortalities from cold stun events, into the stock assessment model. To achieve this, she is developing a new size-structured, state-spaced stock assessment framework that operates on a seasonal time-step and implements an integrated tagging submodel to inform and estimate seasonal natural mortality rates. Because natural mortality is a highly sensitive parameter in stock assessments, improving its estimation can significantly influence the accuracy of assessment outcomes and the effectiveness of resulting management decisions.

Brooks says her work supports a more comprehensive understanding of how population dynamics respond to environmental variability. This knowledge is essential for advancing fisheries management and marine conservation, as effective stock assessments guide decisions that help maintain sustainable and resilient fish populations.

Cao says, “Johnna has achieved a major milestone, and Jeff [Buckel] and I couldn’t be happier for her!  Her hard work and dedication have truly paid off, and it’s been such a joy to see her grow and succeed.”

According to Brooks, the fellowship will fund part of her stock assessment research work. She will receive the award in August at the Marine Fisheries Section Business Meeting in San Antonio, Texas.