Marine Life, Citizen Science, and REEF

Caroly joined REEF in August 2018, and has had a lifelong passion for connecting people to nature. Caroly was inspired to pursue conservation following her graduate work on electric fish in the rainforest streams of Panama. A third-generation oceanographer and fish geek, she has 27 years of government, nonprofit, and academic experience in marine and freshwater conservation, research, policy, and education. She has led fish biodiversity surveys along the Congo River, and dived in Lake Tanganyika to explore fish habitat and how it drives behavioral and brain evolution. Most recently, she was USAID's Senior Science Advisor to the Administrator and Chief Scientist. Her nonprofit experience includes being Executive Director of the Merrimack River Watershed Council, Director of Science for The Nature Conservancy in RI, Senior Scientist for Aquatic Biodiversity at the New England Aquarium, and founder/co-founder of a RI nonprofit that was awarded the Citizens of the Year Award by the New England Grassroots Environment Fund. Caroly is author/co-author of 30 publications, and was Chair of the Science and Data Working Group for the Atlantic Coastal Fish Habitat Partnership for 5 years. She was an AAAS Science, Engineering and Diplomacy Fellow, and an AAAS Overseas Fellow in USAID's regional South Pacific office in Fiji. Caroly holds a Bachelor of Arts in Biology from Wellesley College, a Ph.D. in marine biology from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Marine Biological Lab, Caltech, and Boston University.