Meet Niza Contreras, FCP’s 2022 Fisheries Opportunity Fund Fellow!
In 2022, Niza Contreras (UCSC Masters Student, Coastal Science and Policy, ‘23) was selected as the first recipient of the Fisheries Opportunity Fund Award. Niza used the award funds to strengthen climate adaptation strategy implementation in fisheries in Baja California Sur. She partnered with Comunidad y Biodiversidad (COBI), ten FEDECOOP cooperatives, and local fishers and decision makers to develop a new climate adaptation knowledge-sharing platform. Her overall goal is to help communities understand and implement the best adaptation strategies for their environment.
Check out Niza’s blog post on the New England Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Action Fund (MCAF) website HERE!
Bio: Niza is passionate about studying community-based fisheries management, particularly in Latin America, with a focus on using traditional conservation practices to develop adaptive solutions to the effects of climate change on marine ecosystems. She is bilingual in Spanish and English with dual US-Mexican citizenship. Niza hopes to bring both a transdisciplinary and a transnational perspective to these complex socio-ecological systems, with the recognition that climate change is breaking barriers and forcing us to reimagine our conventional divisions and definitions. Niza graduated from Stanford University as an Earth Systems major in 2020 with a focus on Oceans, Climate, and Atmosphere.
This award was made possible by Giving Day 2021 donations. Please consider donating or sharing our call to donate so we may continue to support innovative research and diverse perspectives in fisheries science.
