Connie Y. Kot

Connie has worked on a variety of projects with the Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab, including the Migratory Connectivity in the Ocean initiative (MiCO), State of the World’s Sea Turtles (SWOT), Ocean Biodiversity Information System – Spatial Ecological Analysis of Megavertebrate Populations (OBIS-SEAMAP), and the Global Bycatch Assessment Project (Project GloBAL). Connie has extensive experience managing complex databases, particularly regarding biogeographic data on marine megafauna. For MiCO, she leads the effort on gathering and producing information on how sea turtles connect oceans through their movements and area us patterns, among other objectives.  As the SWOT database manager, Connie interacts with data providers all over the world while organizing, analyzing and mapping the world’s largest global sea turtle nesting database. In addition, a major part of Connie’s role with OBIS-SEAMAP has been communication with data holders to fill data gaps in OBIS-SEAMAP’s existing datasets, while highlighting their research online.  Connie’s main interests are in analyzing the spatial and temporal patterns and linkages among fisheries effort, protected species distribution, bycatch, and the environment.

Prior to coming to Duke, she worked at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science Biogeography Team on developing a geographic information system (GIS) to reduce sea turtle bycatch in US Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico fisheries, among other projects. Before NOAA, Connie had a diverse background in freshwater habitat mapping, marine mammal and sea turtle rehabilitation, artificial reef monitoring, and the assessment of estuaries and tidal creek health, but the ultimate goal of conservation was the same. Connie received a Marine Biology MS at the University of Charleston, and double majored in Biology (BS) and Environmental Studies (BS) at Binghamton University, SUNY. For more information, please visit Connie’s website.