Speakers

Coral cover and composition

Erica Towle
PhD, NOAA Office for Coastal Management, USA

Dr Erica Towle is a marine biologist who currently serves as the coordinator for the internationally recognised National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) National Coral Reef Monitoring Program (NCRMP). As coordinator, Towle oversees the $6 million annual project. The NCRMP is a long-term, national-scale program to understand the status and trends in U.S. states and territories with coral reefs. Towle is in charge of facilitating and maintaining internal and external collaborations within NOAA, other federal agencies, state/territorial agencies, non-governmental organizations, and academia; providing technical scientific expertise on all coral monitoring program decisions; budget planning and execution of all monitoring missions and program expenditures; maintaining data stewardship, quality assurance and control, reporting, and data archival; and representing the program at meetings and conferences. Prior to leading the program, Towle was an advisor to the Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere (the Administrator of NOAA). Towle is the recipient of the prestigious NOAA Knauss Fellowship and served as a Fellow in the U.S. Senate’s Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, Subcommittee for Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard. Towle earned her PhD in Marine Biology and Fisheries from the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, and her research has been featured in National Geographic and The Miami Herald. 

Narissa Bax
PhD, Pinngortitaleriffik Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, Greenland Climate Research Centre, GL

Dr Bax is a New Zealand/Aotearoa-born marine ecologist and deep-sea coral specialist with a research focus on polar and subpolar seabeds and how these biodiverse environments contribute to the carbon cycle in the context of climate change (Blue Carbon). She provides technical scientific expertise to the GOOS Biology and Ecosystems Panel and co-leads the Coral EOV. Bax is specialised in the coral family Stylasteridae, contributing to the first International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species for Cold-Water Corals and the third Cold-Water Coral and Sponge Sub-Chapter of the next UN World Ocean Assessment. The IPBES and the IPCC have acknowledged her research, citing the Bax et al. (2021) policy-science collaboration for the protection of Antarctic blue carbon in their joint report prior to COP-26. She presented on blue carbon at COP-27 in 2022 and COP-29 in 2024 as part of a Deep Ocean Stewardship Initiative delegation. In 2023, she was honoured to be included in a Powerhouse Museum exhibition as one of Australia’s leaders for 100 climate conversations and awarded the Deep Ocean Observing Strategy (DOOS) future leader in deep-sea science Honorarium in 2022 and chosen as a DOOS Ambassador in 2025. She coordinates a sub-Antarctic eDNA study of giant kelp forests and a sub-Antarctic Blue Carbon and Natural Archives network. In February 2024, Bax joined the BlueCea project at the Pinngortitaleriffik Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, uniquely bridging the Arctic and Antarctic. Dr Bax earned her PhD in marine ecology from the University of Tasmania’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, Australia. Her research has been featured in Oceanographic Magazine, The Conversation, Wired Magazine, Carbon Brief and Al Jazeera News. 

Microbe biomass and diversity

Alejandra Prieto-Dávo
Professor, National Autonomous University of Mexico, MEX

Dr Alejandra Prieto-Dávo is an Oceanographer and Full Professor in the Department of Chemistry at UNAM’s Sisal campus, Faculty of Chemistry. She holds a PhD in Oceanography and a Master’s in Coastal Oceanography. For over 15 years, Dr Prieto-Dávo has investigated marine microbial diversity in coastal ecosystems across Mexico-including studies in coastal cenotes of the Yucatán Peninsula. Using advanced genomics, metagenomics, and molecular biology techniques, she explores marine microbes and sediment bacteria as sources of novel natural products- such as antibiotics and antiviral compounds- and assesses their biotechnological applications. Dr Prieto-Dávo has led and mentored numerous research teams, supervising multiple undergraduate, graduate students and five postdoctoral fellows in Sisal. She has participated in international oceanographic expeditions studying marine sediment bacteria and viruses in oxygen minimum zones along the Eastern Tropical Pacific.

Since June 2024, she co-leads the Microbes, Biomass & Diversity Essential Ocean Variable panel within GOOS (UNESCO), contributing to global efforts in ocean conservation. In late 2024, she was appointed to the Science Advisory Committee of the Ocean Biodiversity Observation Network (OBON).

Julie Robidart
National Oceanography Centre, UK

Julie is the Head of Ocean Technology and Engineering at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. She has been working on marine ‘omics’ for 25 years in the US, Australia and UK. She’s an expert on marine microbiomes and their mediation of carbon and nitrogen cycles. Her work centres around scaling marine observations, developing a suite of new deployable technologies to broaden the time, space and taxonomic coverage for marine organisms. 

Moderator

Sean Porter
Oceanographic Research Institute, South African Association for Marine Biological Research

Dr Sean Porter is a Senior Scientist at the Oceanographic Research Institute in Durban, South Africa — a not-for-profit organisation where he heads the Coral Reef Ecology Programme.
He holds a PhD in the ecology of East African coral reefs from the University of Cape Town. Porter’s research focuses on the pressures faced by coral reefs, particularly climate change and agricultural pollutants. One of his key responsibilities is managing the oldest coral reef monitoring programme in the western Indian Ocean, now 33 years old. He serves as South Africa’s National Contact Point for the International Coral Reef Initiative and regularly contributes to the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network. Porter also sits on the Scientific and Advisory Committee of the United Nations’ G20 Coral Research and Development Accelerator Platform and is a Topic Editor for the journal African Invertebrates. He is a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Species Survival Commission Coral Specialist Group and recently co-authored assessments of 244 reef-
building coral species. Currently, Porter is supervising four postgraduate students conducting research in South Africa, Mozambique, and Tanzania.

We will continue with the Networking Fridays during the next months. More information about future sessions as well as presentations and videos from previous sessions can be found here. Please do not forget to subscribe to our YouTube Channel.  Twitter Hashtag: #netfridays. Expect some very exciting mornings, afternoons or evenings, depending on where you are…

If you need any additional information please send an email to Catarina Duarte.