Environmental Stakeholder Committee

The ISSF Environmental Stakeholder Committee is comprised of expert representatives from various conservation and scientific bodies who serve in their personal capacity. Members of the Committee review information and provide analysis. Any involvement with the Foundation does not imply endorsement of policy decisions.

Dr. William Fox – Chair

Vice President & Managing Director for Fisheries, WWF-U.S.

Dr. Fox joined WWF in his present role in 2008, where he is responsible for the WWF’s U.S. fisheries programs. He has authored or co-authored over 60 scientific publications, and is a member of the American Fisheries Society, a Fellow of the American Institute of Fishery Research Biologists and Sigma Xi–the Research Society.

From 1982 to 1990, Dr. Fox was Professor of Marine Biology & Fisheries at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS) and Director of the University’s Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies. Dr. Fox rejoined NOAA in 1990 where he held positions as the Director of the National Marine Fisheries Service and Director of NOAA Fisheries’ Office of Science & Technology. In 2004 he became Director of the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, and has since also headed the U.S. scientific delegation to the International Scientific Committee for North Pacific Tunas and Tuna-like species, and was the chief science advisor to the U.S. delegations to the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission and Northern Committee of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission.

Dr. Fox holds degrees from the University of Miami and the University of Washington – specializing in marine biological systems.

Name: Brad Ack
Affiliation: Marine Stewardship Council
Expertise: Certification
Location: Seattle, WA, USA

Brad Ack is a lifelong conservationist who has worked on a wide range of environmental and sustainable development challenges and issues in diverse settings and institutions. Brad currently serves as Special Projects Director in the CEO’s office of the Marine Stewardship Council.

Before joining the MSC in 2007 as the Americas Regional Director, Brad served for five years as chair and executive director of the Puget Sound Action Team, a Washington state agency with responsibility for the restoration of Puget Sound. Previously, Brad served 10 years as Program Director of the Grand Canyon Trust, a regional organization working to conserve the unique ecosystems of the Colorado Plateau region. During that time, Brad also served for five years as managing director of the Grand Canyon Forests Foundation, conducting ecological restoration of degraded forest ecosystems. Prior to that, Brad spent five years with World Wildlife Fund working throughout Latin America, and before that worked with Catholic Relief Services in Honduras.

Brad holds a Master of Sciences degree in Foreign Service and International Development from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and a B.A. in Political Science from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Name: Markus Burgener
Affiliation: TRAFFIC
Expertise: Wildlife Trade
Location: Johannesburg, South Africa

Markus Bürgener is a Senior Program Officer with TRAFFIC – the wildlife trade monitoring organization, which focuses on the trade in wild plants and animals. TRAFFIC is a joint program of WWF and IUCN. He has been based with the East/Southern African regional program of TRAFFIC for the past ten years and has worked on national, regional and international policy and legislation related to biodiversity conservation. For the past seven years he has driven TRAFFIC’s marine fisheries work in East and Southern Africa where he has conducted research into and carried out advocacy and training initiatives focusing on illegal and unsustainable fisheries and related trade. Markus is a qualified attorney and has a Master’s Degree in International Environmental Law.

Name: Bruce Collette
Affiliation: National Systematics Laboratory, NOAA
Expertise: Ichthyologist
Location: Washington, DC, USA

Bruce Collette’s interest in animals began during summers at a camp in the Adirondack Mountains. In high school on Long Island, he experimented with color change in frogs and during vacations from his undergraduate days at Cornell University; he studied lizard behavior and morphology while visiting his parents in Cuba. Bruce switched to fishes in graduate school at Cornell and received his Ph.D. for a taxonomic study of a small group of freshwater fishes called darters that live along the Coastal Plain from Maine to Florida.

In 1960, Bruce accepted a position as an ichthyologist at the National Systematics Laboratory in what is now the National Marine Fisheries Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency, housed in the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. He is currently a Senior Scientist in the Systematics Laboratory. Bruce’s research focuses on the anatomy, systematics, evolution, and biogeography of tunas and their relatives plus other fishes such as halfbeaks, needlefishes, and toadfishes. His research has entailed visiting major fish collections around the world, collecting expeditions on various vessels, and using SCUBA to collect and observe fishes. He was appointed as Chair of the IUCN/SSC Tuna and Billfish Specialist Group for 2009-12 and as Red List Authority Focal Point for tunas and billfishes. Results of his research have been published in over 250 papers in many scientific journals plus co-authoring two regional fish guides, The Fishes of Bermuda and Bigelow and Schroeder’s Fishes of the Gulf Of Maine and an ichthyology textbook, The Diversity of Fishes: Biology, Evolution, and Ecology, now in its second (2009) edition and the most widely used college-level ichthyology text in the world. Bruce has taught ichthyology as a summer field course in Massachusetts, Bermuda, and Maine for many years.

Name: Sonja Fordham
Affiliation: Shark Advocates International
Expertise: Shark Conservation
Location: Washington, DC, USA

Sonja Fordham has been a leading proponent of numerous landmark shark conservation actions, including the first U.S. fishing limits for Atlantic sharks and rays. Ms. Fordham has co-authored numerous publications on shark fisheries management and is a member of various shark, skate, and Regional Fishery Management Organization (RFMO) advisory panels, including the International Commission for Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) U.S. Advisory Committee. She regularly attends annual ICCAT meetingsas part of the US delegation and has participated as an observer to meetings associated with the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC), the Western Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC), and the “Kobe” joint tuna RFMO process Ms. Fordham is Deputy Chair of the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Shark Specialist Group and Conservation Committee Chair for the American Elasmobranch Society.

From 1991-2009, Ms. Fordham directed shark conservation projects at the Ocean Conservancy. In mid-2006, she began a three and a half year assignment in Brussels as policy director for the Shark Alliance, a coalition formed to improve European shark policies. She founded Shark Advocates International as a project of The Ocean Foundation in May 2010. Her work has focused on publicizing the plight of sharks and advocating science-based shark policies before fishery management and wildlife conservation bodies.

Ms. Fordham received a U.S. Department of Commerce Environmental Hero Award in 2000, a Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council Fishery Achievement Award in 2004, and the inaugural Peter Benchley Shark Conservation Award in 2007. In 2008, Washingtonian magazine named her one of 30 local Eco-Heroes.

Name: Jennifer Goldstein
Affiliation: New England Aquarium
Expertise: Sustainable Seafood
Location: Boston, USA

Jennifer Goldstein began working on tuna and large pelagics in 1994 as manager of the New England Aquarium’s bluefin tuna spotter pilot aerial survey to assess the distribution and abundance of this species in the seasonal Gulf of Maine fishery. She has participated in bluefin tuna hydro-acoustic tracking and satellite tagging projects in conjunction with the New England Aquarium and the Large Pelagics Research Lab at the University of New Hampshire which have helped to determine habitat use in the Gulf of Maine and seasonal migratory patterns in the western Atlantic. Jennifer continued to work closely with fishermen and industry for the remainder of her graduate work, focusing on the reproductive energetics and foraging ecology of bluefin tuna, issues which relate directly to the conservation and management of this fishery.

Since September 2008, Jennifer has been a part of the New England Aquarium Sustainable Seafood Advisory Services where she focuses on large pelagics in her current position as a researcher and analyst, with a special focus on yellowfin tuna and swordfish. In this role, she works closely with major seafood corporations that are interested in the sustainability of these resources and formulates recommendations to them on sourcing and potential avenues for fishery improvement.

Name: Scott Henderson
Affiliation: Conservation International
Expertise: Marine Conservation
Location: Galapagos Islands, Ecuador

Scott Henderson earned his graduate degree at Oxford University (UK) with honors in Environmental Change and Management. He obtained his undergraduate degree from Washington and Lee University in 1987 with magna cum laude honors in Biology and English Literature. Scott is a conservation and marine management practitioner with field experience as a researcher, consultant and as NGO staff primarily in Latin America, especially Ecuador, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia and Ecuador, but has also worked in numerous African countries, including Madagascar where he undertook research for his MSc thesis. Scott’s main areas of expertise are marine conservation and science, invasive species management, large project development and management and fund-raising with both private and public foundations. He lives in the Galapagos Islands with his Ecuadorian wife and presently is Conservation International’s Regional Director of Marine Conservation in the South America Division’s Eastern Tropical Pacific region.

Name: Matthew Owens
Affiliation: FishWise
Expertise: Seafood Supply Chains
Location: Santa Cruz, CA, USA

Matt Owens directs program management, business development, and internal operations at FishWise. He and his team of Program Managers understand and respond to the needs of existing FishWise member retailers and distributors while developing innovative, customized programs for new business partners. As Director of Operations, Matt continues to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of client services, internal procedures, and staff resources. Prior to joining FishWise, Matt worked on marine resource issues with the environmental consulting firm ICF Jones and Stokes. Additional experience includes managing Tropo Farms, a large-scale tilapia aquaculture facility in Ghana, and assisting with the business development of the El Barril Fishermen’s Cooperative in Mexico. This direct involvement with production along with daily supplier interactions through his work at FishWise provides him a strong grasp of the seafood supply chain. Also, Matt holds a master’s degree from UCSD/IRPS in International Environmental Economics and Policy with a Marine Resource Emphasis, and graduated with honors. The combination of a solid academic background and hands-on industry experience makes Matt a powerful resource in helping seafood companies create positive change on the water while continuing to perform financially.

Name: Ben Sullivan
Affiliation: Birdlife International
Expertise: Seabird Expert
Location: Tasmania, Australia

Ben Sullivan is based in Tasmania and employed by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (UK BirdLife partner). He has several years experience as an at-sea observer and developing and testing mitigation measures to reduce seabird bycatch on longliners and trawlers. Ben retains a passionate interest in the development and trialing of mitigation measures including some promising methods currently being trialed for tuna longline fisheries. Ben has been actively involved in several aspects of the implementation of the FAO International Plan of Actions-Seabirds, including the development and adoption of the Falkland Island’s NPOA-Seabirds and working closely with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to develop the recently published FAO Technical Guidelines for Responsible Fisheries: Best practices to reduce the incidental catch of seabirds in capture fisheries (FAO 2009).

In his role as the BirdLife Global Seabird Programme Coordinator he is involved in a mix of policy development and project coordination and management across the BirdLife Partnership, and with collaborators from around the world, including the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels (ACAP). A current focus of his work is the management of the Albatross Task Force (ATF). The ATF is a rapidly emerging international team of mitigation instructors that work directly with fishermen and fisheries managers in seven countries in southern Africa and South America to demonstrate the effective use mitigation measures to reduce seabird mortality. Ben was recently awarded a PEW Fellowship in Marine Conservation to implement a multi-national ATF mitigation research project.