Cali Turner Tomaszewicz

Cali is Research Biologist at the SWFSC in the Marine Mammal and Turtle Division, as
part of the Marine Turtle Ecology & Assessment Program. Her work primarily focuses
on the life history, demographics, and population ecology of sea turtles; but also
includes collaborative work on marine mammals. Her research combines several tools
and techniques – both in the lab and the field – to recreate multi-year life history and
habitat use patterns of sea turtles to help guide management policies and inform
population assessments. Cali conducts in-water research with the MTEAP team, in
addition to lab-based work, most commonly skeletochronology and chemical analysis,
to help answer questions related to age, movement, habitat use, foraging patterns,
growth, health, and maturation rates. Skeletochronology, the study of bone growth
layers, is one primary tool used to generate age-specific data on sea turtles. Other tools
include chemical analysis – typically stable isotope analysis – and more recently,
epigenetics – to fill in more details on life history and demographics of sea turtles. Many
of the techniques used in the Marine Turtle Demography Lab that Cali manages were
ones that she developed while obtaining her Ph.D. in Biology (Ecology, Behavior &
Evolution) at the University of California San Diego. Cali also received a Masters from
the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation, and a
Bachelors in Environment, Economics & Politics from Claremont McKenna College. Cali
also enjoys mentoring undergraduate and graduate students, especially students within
some of NOAA’s internship programs such as the Hollings Undergraduate Scholarship
program and IN FISH (Inclusive NOAA Fisheries Internship Program).