2023 Chapter President Candidates
Dr. Angela Collins
Angela Collins joined Florida AFS in 2005 and has been hooked on FLAFS meetings ever since. She especially enjoys the bonfires! Angela is a native to the Gulf Coast of Florida, where she spent years living on a sailboat and has logged over 3,000 hours underwater. She is passionate about supporting working waterfronts and working with stakeholders to conserve Florida’s commercial and recreational fisheries. She spent ten years as a marine fisheries biologist with Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, where she specialized in cooperative research with divers and anglers to collect data about hogfish, Goliath grouper and Gag grouper. She spent time early in her career as a science diver with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, an aquarist with Walt Disney World, and studying cownose rays with Mote Marine Laboratory. Angela currently works for the University of Florida and Florida Sea Grant, where she specializes in research and Extension related to Florida’s marine fisheries and bivalve shellfish aquaculture industry.
Collins holds a B.S. in Biology and Marine Science from Florida Atlantic University, an M.S. in Integrative Biology from the University of South Florida, and a Ph.D. in Biology, Ecology and Evolution from the University of South Florida.
Potential symposium ideas include Aquaculture for Restoration; Research and Extension with Industry and/or Commercial Fisheries; Incorporating Stakeholders in Research and Management.
Dr. Amanda Croteau
Dr. Amanda Croteau is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of West Florida in the Center for Environmental Diagnostics and Bioremediation. Amanda is an estuarine ecologist whose research focuses on water quality, plankton and fish ecology, and the conservation and restoration of coastal habitats. She is currently working on several projects focused on estuarine ecosystems in the Florida Panhandle, including collaborations with three new Panhandle estuary programs as they develop their management plans (compilation and analysis of long-term water quality and habitat data, stakeholder workshops), investigating the historical presence of oysters in Perdido Bay, and monitoring water quality and zooplankton diversity and abundance in Perdido Bay.
Amanda’s very first professional meeting was a Florida Chapter AFS meeting as a graduate student at the University of Florida. During both her MS and PhD at UF, she had the opportunity to attend many more Chapter meetings, as well as division and parent society meetings and to become more involved in AFS. As a graduate student, she served as FL AFS student subunit secretary and president. Without the aid of the student travel awards funded by the annual raffle and silent auction, she and numerous other students would have faced more challenges in attending our Chapter meetings, which can play a pivotal role in AFS involvement as well as establishing valuable professional relationships. Because of the importance of these travel awards to her own professional development, Amanda became involved in assuring their continued availability by serving as a co-chair of the raffle and silent auction which is held in conjunction with our annual Chapter meeting. Amanda has also served on several other Chapter committees including the Membership and Marketing Committee and the newly established Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee.
Symposium Idea – “Nailed it!? How do we measure success and the impact of our work?” No matter if our focus area is restoration, stock enhancement, stakeholder engagement, or science communication, we need to be able to assess the impact of our work. This symposium would invite speakers to discuss topics ranging from how to set quantifiable benchmarks for evaluating success, spatial and temporal scales of evaluations, assessing population or community level impacts, economic impact and return on investment, stories of success and lessons learned from failures.