The Fish Habitat Section was proud to award the 2024 Annual Meeting Travel Award to Jordanna Bergman (Student Winner) and Simen Kaalstad (Early Career Professional Winner)!
Student Award
Jordanna Bergman is a Canadian-American aquatic ecologist and conservation scientist whose love for the outdoors encouraged a career that centres on taking care of this beautiful world. Although her doctoral research evaluated connectivity and space use of native and freshwater fishes in a historic waterway, she shifted her focus to kelp forests and the fisheries they support for her Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Victoria. In close collaboration with Indigenous, government, and other research partners across the British Columbia coast, Jordanna’s research seeks to determine the drivers of a potentially climate-change linked threat, kelp-encrusting bryozoans, to kelp health and resilience, and the fish communities they offer critical habitat to. You can read more about Jordanna here.
Early Career Professional Award
Simen Kaalstad is the Director of the Atlantic Coastal Fish Habitat Partnership (FHP). He began working with the Atlantic Coastal Fish Habitat Partnership in 2023. The Atlantic Coastal FHP is one of 20 FHPs nationwide and provides support for conservation of nearshore marine habitats from Maine to Florida. Simen’s work represents successful partnership development across a wide range of partners working to restore estuarine and coastal habitat types spanning much of the eastern seaboard.
He is a Texas native with a Master of Science in Fisheries and Mariculture from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, and a Bachelor of Science in Marine and Freshwater Biology from the University of Texas at Austin. His previous work and graduate research focused on mangrove ecology and restoration with respect to climate change in areas such as The Bahamas, Mexico, and the northern Gulf of Mexico.
