Skyler Rose Sagarese, Ph.D.

Skyler Sagarese, Ph.D. is a Research Ecologist at the Southeast Fisheries Science Center.

As part of the Gulf of Mexico Branch in the Sustainable Fisheries Division (formally the Gulf and Caribbean Branch), Skyler Sagarese conducts fisheries stock assessments on both data-rich groupers and data-limited species. She was part of an interdisciplinary team that developed assessment tools for the U.S. Caribbean. This work lead to the adoption of an effective fisheries management framework for the region and earned her a 2021 Bronze Medal Award in Customer Service. Skyler is also an active advocate for Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management, being involved in multiple ecosystem modeling projects with implications on fishery management decisions in the Gulf of Mexico.

Most notably, Skyler is a Co-Principal Investigator of a multi-institutional RESTORE Act Science Program Grant awarded in 2017 to develop ecosystem models for use in fisheries management, with a specific focus on Gulf menhaden. Her research interests include ecosystem modeling and incorporation of ecosystem considerations into stock assessments, and advancing data-limited stock assessment methods. Prior to her current position at the Center, Skyler was a post-doctoral research associate at the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies (CIMAS) at the University of Miami. There she served as a liaison between science center assessment analysts and the Integrated Ecosystem Assessment team. In recognition for this work, she was awarded a National Marine Fisheries Service Team Member of the Year Award in 2014.

Skyler earned her Ph.D. from Stony Brook University (SBU) on Long Island, New York, where she studied the population ecology of spiny dogfish as part of a National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)-Sea Grant Fellowship in Population Dynamics. She also received her Master's Degree from SBU, working on a diverse range of projects that included acoustic telemetry of adult winter flounder, feeding habits of fishes within coastal bays of Long Island, and an investigation on the effect of temperature and photoperiod on vertebral band deposition in little skate.

Skyler is featured in our Faces of the Southeast Science Center Series. Read more about Skyler