Dr Jesse van der Grient joined the South Atlantic Environmental Research Institute (SAERI) in April 2022, but only recently made it to the Islands. At SAERI, she will lead the project ‘Climate change resilience in the Falkland Islands fisheries and marine ecosystem’ (funded by Darwin Plus).
Jesse originally hails from the Netherlands and studied in the UK (University of Oxford), where she obtained a BA in Biological Sciences and a DPhil in Zoology focusing on deep-sea biodiversity and body size patterns and fishing impacts in the north-west Atlantic.
Her next science stint (postdoc) saw her move 100 m down the road to the Geography Department where she worked on modelling multiple simultaneous stressors (fishing, climate change, pollution) on the Chukchi Sea and California Current, focusing especially on the interactive effects between these stressors that can make combined effects stronger (synergistic stressor interactions) or weaker (antagonistic stressor interactions). To compensate for that short move, her next place of work was on the other side of the world. At the University of Hawaii, she worked on understanding the potential effects of deep-sea mining on animals in the water column. Deep-sea mining in international waters is currently not allowed, but the rules and procedures for exploitation are being negotiated right now. Jesse is involved in these meetings as part of the Deep Ocean Stewardship Initiative (DOSI). Deep-sea mining can potentially affect animals important for fisheries support (tunas and billfishes) and carbon drawdown to deeper depths.
In her spare time, Jesse enjoys hiking and watching wildlife, and she is an avid amateur wildlife photographer. She is keen to explore the underwater world of the Falkland Islands through snorkeling and scuba diving.
