Zack Shepard

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Bio

I am part of the Behavioral Insights for Global Fisheries Research Group under the supervision of my advisor Dr. Eric Wade. I transferred into the Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Ph.D. Program as a Third Year from the Integrated Coastal Sciences Ph.D. Program at East Carolina University. I work in southern Belize and my research focuses on quantifying the importance of aquatic foods for the health and culture of coastal communities, providing a more holistic understanding of nearshore marine ecosystems, and the ways in which fishers occupational decisions can influence the health of nearshore systems and local levels of access to aquatic foods. I’ve worked on both social and natural science projects conducting interviews with communities inside and outside of the United States, studied the feeding ecology of galagos and lemurs using stable isotopes and gut microbiome (respectively), and been on research vessels in the Atlantic sampling the water column and sea surface micro-layer for microplastics.