Board Members

Ellen Pikitch	Gideon Shaanan	Andrew Rosenberg	Marc Mangel
Teresa Ish	Tim Eichenberg	Shelly Benoit	Phil Levin

Dr. Ellen Pikitch

Dr. Ellen K. Pikitch is the executive director of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science and a professor at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University. Recognized as an international expert in ocean conservation science, she has authored and edited more than 100 articles and books on fisheries science and management. Dr. Pikitch spearheaded the first scientific consensus on ecosystem-based fishery management, which was published in the journal Science in 2004. More recently, she chaired the Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force, which conducted the most comprehensive global analysis of forage fish management to date, releasing its report “Little Fish, Big Impact: Managing a Crucial Link in Ocean Food Webs,” in April 2012.

Dr. Pikitch also focuses research efforts on vulnerable and ecologically important marine species. She co-edited the first book to focus on pelagic sharks and their plight, and was a co-author of the first paper to estimate the number of sharks killed year, both of which energized and propelled the shark conservation movement. Another extensively exploited fish on which Dr. Pikitch has conducted substantial scientific research is the sturgeon.

The scientific work of Dr. Pikitch has informed policy decisions such as the listings of both the Atlantic and beluga sturgeon under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, a U.S. ban on the sale of beluga caviar, passage of the U.S. Shark Finning Prohibition Act, regulation of the international trade of six species of sharks, and more precautionary forage fisheries management.

Dr. Pikitch received a Ph.D. in Zoology from Indiana University and M.A. and B.S. degrees in Mathematics from the City College of New York.

Gideon Shaanan

Gideon Shaanan is an accomplished high-tech executive and an Entrepreneurship Development consultant. Mr. Shaanan works with organizations and executives to rapidly reach their business, organizational and entrepreneurship goals. He also leads the UCSC School of Engineering’s Entrepreneurship Studies Initiative where he developed and teaches the core courses in entrepreneurship.

Throughout his career, in both executive (CTO, VP) and consulting capacities, Mr. Shaanan has been serving large and small organizations in a wide range of industries. These include global corporations, cutting-edge high-tech startups, educational institutions and non-profits. Among them are Apple Computer, Vitro, U3 (a joint Venture of SanDisk and M-Systems), the Foundation for Hearing Research, Catalyst Strategies, The Adizes Institute, the National Geographic Society, Quarto Publishing of London, the Technion and the Santa Fe Institute.

Mr. Shaanan received a Masters of Engineering degree from Cornell University.

Dr. Andrew Rosenberg

Dr. Andrew Rosenberg is a Professor in the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space at the University of New Hampshire where, prior to April 2004, he was dean of the College of Life Sciences and Agriculture. Over the past three years he has also been a member of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy. Prior to coming to UNH he was the Deputy Director of NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service from 1998-2000, the senior career position in the agency. As Deputy Director he dealt with policy decisions on science and resource management issues nationwide as well as the administration of the agency. He was also a principle agency spokesperson before Congress, the public and technical audiences. Before becoming NMFS Deputy Director, Dr. Rosenberg was the NMFS Northeast Regional Administrator. He negotiated and implemented the recovery program for New England fisheries, reversing overfishing and resource declines on George’s Bank as well as other areas for groundfish and scallop fisheries. He also worked to develop and implement marine mammal recovery programs and endangered species protections throughout the northeast. He also has served as the U.S. lead representative in several international fishery management organizations such as NAFO, NASCO and FAO. Dr. Rosenberg’s scientific work is in the field of population dynamics, resource assessment and resource management policy. He holds a B.S. in Fisheries Biology from the University of Massachusetts, an M.S. in Oceanography from Oregon State University and a Ph.D. in Biology from Dalhousie University. He was on the faculty of Imperial College of Science and Technology in London for six years and was the Deputy Director of the Renewable Resources Assessment Group, and internationally known quantitative analysis and policy consultancy group. He currently also serves as the Senior Vice President of MRAG Americas, a consulting company with offices in Florida, Massachusetts and affiliated with MRAG, a London-based international marine resource consultancy.

Dr. Marc Mangel

Dr. Marc Mangel is Distinguished Professor of Mathematical Biology and Director of the Center for Stock Assessment Research (CSTAR) at the University of California Santa Cruz, where he has served since 1996. He also acts as the Senior Scientific Advisor for MRAG Americas, as well as the Director of its California regional office. MRAG Americas is an independent consulting business dedicated to promoting responsible, rational and sustainable utilization of aquatic resources. MRAG Americas performs multi-disciplinary projects for a variety of clients including international, governmental and non-governmental entities, as well as industrial and commercial companies.

From 1980-1996, Mangel was at the University of California Davis, where he served as Assistant, Associate and Full Professor for eight years in the Department of Mathematics and eight years in the Department of Evolution and Ecology. He was founding Director of the Center for Population Biology (1989-1993). His awards include, in part, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, 1987; Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship, Oxford University, 1988; George Gund Foundation Distinguished Environmental Scholar, Case Western Reserve University,1992; Distinguished Statistical Ecologist, International Association for Ecology, 1998; Mote Eminent Scholar, Florida State University, 2000; Fellow, California Academy of Sciences, 2000; Fellow American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2003; UCSC Academic Senate Excellence in Teaching Award, 2003; Frohlich Fellow, CSIRO Hobart, 2006; Astor Lecturer, University of Oxford, 2007; Kaeser Lecturer University of Wisconsin, 2008; and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 2009. Mangel has numerous journal publications and books that include, in part, Dynamic State Variable Models in Ecology: Methods and Applications (with Colin Clark, 2000, Oxford), and The Theoretical Biologist's Toolbox. Quantitative methods for ecology and evolutionary biology (Cambridge, 2007). He has supervised more than 50 undergraduate research projects or senior theses, 20 PhD students and 27 post-doctoral colleagues.

Teresa Ish

Teresa Ish builds partnerships with leading companies that harness industry's ability to innovate and create environmental improvements that are aggressive, yet feasible. She is currently leading Environmental Defense Fund's partnerships with seafood buyers to help them source more environmentally friendly farmed seafood by developing purchasing standards. As eco-labels for farmed seafood become more appealing to the aquaculture industry, consumers and seafood buyers, establishing environmentally rigorous standards for certification is increasingly important. Teresa works with these stakeholders and other NGOs to push for strong standards for eco-certified farmed seafood grown with technology that is currently available. During her graduate work, Teresa co-founded FishWise and served as the organization's Director of Science until joining Environmental Defense Fund. Teresa also has an extensive background in capture fisheries as one of the co-authors of the stock and assessment for California sheephead (Semicossyphus pulcher) and a NOAA award winning paper on adaptive management of fishery resources. Teresa received her Masters of Marine Science from the University of California at Santa Cruz where she was a California Sea Grant Fellow and a member of the Center for Stock Assessment Research. She received her B.A. in Environmental Studies and Biology from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Tim Eichenberg

Tim Eichenberg is Chief Counsel for the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, adjunct professor of law at the Vermont Law School, where he teaches Ocean and Coastal Law, and a member of the Bar in California and Washington DC. He holds a BA from Earlham College and a JD from the Washington University School of Law, and was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship in Marine Policy from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He has co-chaired the Clean Water Network in Washington, D.C., co-founded the Casco Baykeeper Program in Maine, and has served as legal counsel for the Ocean Conservancy, Oceana, the Marine Law Institute, the California Coastal Commission and the Environmental Defense Center. He has authored more than 30 articles and reports on environmental issues, and is an editor of Ocean and Coastal Law published by the American Bar Association in 2008.

Shelly Benoit

Shelly Benoit co-founded FishWise while in graduate school at the University of California, Santa Cruz, department of Ocean Sciences. Her graduate work focused on marine trace element pollution issues and coastal remote sensing. Her B.S. is in Biology, emphasis in Evolution and Ecology, from the University of California, Davis. Shelly is very interested in creating business opportunities where financial success is based on activities/products that directly benefit global environmental stability. Her entrepreneurial spirit was honed while working in finance with two startups (100+ employees each) in the late 1990’s. After leaving the ED position at FishWise, she has traveled extensively, adventuring and gathering material for her current projects.

Phil Levin

Phillip Levin leads the Ecosystem Science Program and the Nearshore Ecology Team at NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, WA, USA. Dr. Levin is a community ecologist and conservation biologist who is interested In bridging the gaps between theory and practice in conservation biology and fisheries science, and developing modeling and statistical approaches to inform ecosystem-based management of marine systems. The main focus of his current work is ondeveloping scientific tools to inform Integrated Ecosystem Assessments and Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning in the United States (and beyond). Levin is the scientific co-lead of NOAA’s Integrated Ecosystem Assessment efforts in the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem and Puget Sound. In the course of this work, he has led the development of new analytical tools for characterizing ecosystem health and forecasting the cumulative effects of fisheries management and coastal zone management and climate change on living marine resources. Dr. Levin received the Department of Commerce Silver Award for his work on marine ecosystems, and the Seattle Aquarium’s Conservation Research Award for his work on Puget Sound sharks. He has published over 100 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters and technical reports, and his work has been featured in such news outlets as NPR, the BBC, MSBNC, The Economist, among others. Levin is the Senior Editor of the scientific journal, Conservation Letters, recently served as President of the Western Society of Naturalists, and has served on numerous editorial boards and scientific advisory panels. Before joining the National Marine Fisheries Service in 1999, Dr. Levin was an Assistant Professor of Marine Biology at Texas A&M University. He received his Ph.D. in zoology from the University of New Hampshire in and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina.