Ana M. Parma, Ph.D.

Research

Ana Parma is a global board member of The Nature Conservancy (2013-22) and a research scientist with Centro Nacional Patagónico in Argentina, with expertise in fisheries modeling, assessment, and management. Her research interests center on the study of fisheries from different angles, ranging from technical aspects of fish stock assessments, modeling, and the design of effective harvest control rules, to institutional aspects of decision-making and fisheries governance. Parma’s Pew fellowship addressed problems posed by “spatially structured” fisheries, which target fish that are relatively sedentary, such as scallops, sea urchins, and many other creatures associated with the sea floor. With the goal of helping fishery managers solve conservation problems for which conventional prescriptions are not applicable, Parma analyzed four fisheries that present markedly different analytic and conservation challenges. She studied a small-scale scallop fishery employing divers on the Valdes Peninsula in Argentina; a large sea urchin fishery in Chile that employs approximately 4,000 divers who fish hundreds of beds scattered in a maze of fjords and islands; a large-scale industrial shrimp fishery off Patagonia; and a diving fishery in Chile for “loco,” a carnivorous snail superficially resembling abalone. The role of Parma and her team was pivotal in bringing two government agencies that had never previously been able to cooperate— Tourism and Fisheries—onto the same advisory board, which then created rules of operation, a mission statement, and other oversight guidance and procedures.

To learn more about Parma, visit her bio online:  https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/who-we-are/our-people/ana-parma/.