Research Team, Students and Projects
Dedicated Experts With A Proven Record Of Success.
- Research Team -
Dr. Tristan Guttridge - Vice President, Director, Lead Scientist
Tristan Guttridge has a BSc in Zoology and PhD in Behavioral Ecology from the University of Leeds, United Kingdom. He has a passion for asking questions about animal behavior and has spent over a decade learning about the behavioral complexities of sharks.
On completion of his doctoral research, Tristan was awarded a prestigious Endeavour Fellowship through the Australian Government, and conducted a series of innovative experiments exploring shark cognition hosted through Macquarie University, Australia.
Tristan held the role of Director at BBFSF, The Bahamas, for many years which saw him establish new long-term research initiatives to investigate migration, philopatry, and personality of sharks and rays, as well creating courses for the public for improved outreach and education.
Tristan has over 60 peer-reviewed publications, has appeared in and hosted many TV shows for Discovery Shark Week and the BBC, and was awarded a National Geographic Explorer Grant, which he is using to improve our understanding of the habitat, space use and fishery interactions of two endangered hammerhead species.
Over the last few years, Tristan has established a research program in Andros, Bahamas and Jupiter, Florida, for Saving the Blue. To learn more about the research he is leading for Saving the Blue please view our sawfish, hammerhead, silky shark and sharks of Andros research pages.
Tristan’s publications:
Dr. Mark Bond - board Director
Mark Bond graduated with a BSc in Marine Geography from Cardiff University, Wales, United Kingdom, and a PhD in Marine and Atmospheric Science from Stony Brook University, United States. Mark went on to complete a postdoctoral position at Florida International University, United States, as part of the Global FinPrint Project, The world's first standardized look at shark and ray populations on coral reef ecosystems at a global scale. Mark employs a variety of techniques to examine questions regarding ecosystem dynamics and the ecological role of sharks.
Currently, Mark is a marine biology researcher in the Florida International University Department of Biological Sciences. Here, Mark’s current research focus is to assess different management measures such as marine protected areas and their effect on sharks and rays, as we try to conserve and recover threatened populations and species. His work particularly focuses on species whose wild populations are threatened by trade. This involves a combination of field research where he uses techniques such as baited cameras, conventional tagging, and genetic and isotopic analysis to determine an area’s relative abundance and diversity of sharks and rays. Once this data has been collected, he works directly with governments to implement changes in management to help sustain their shark populations.
Mark’s publications:
Dr. Phil Matich - Science and Education adviser
Phil Matich graduated with a BSc in Marine Sciences from the University of South Carolina, United States, and a PhD in Biology from Florida International University, United States. Phil went on to complete a postdoctoral fellowship at Sam Houston State University, United States, as part of the Texas Research Institute for Environmental Studies. Phil employs a variety of techniques to examine questions regarding the behavioral ecology and resilience of sharks.
Currently, Phil teaches courses on fisheries, ecology, and statistics. Here, Phil’s research focus is to assess individual differences in the ecological roles of sharks within their populations, and how variability in these roles leads to greater or lesser resilience to environmental change. This involves a combination of fieldwork, lab work, and computer modeling using techniques such as acoustic telemetry, conventional tagging, and stomach content and isotopic analyses to determine individual- and population-level patterns in distributions, movements, and trophic interactions. Once this data has been collected, Phil determines how robust species are to changes in water quality, habitat availability, and food web structure across different contexts to predict species responses to disturbance, with a current focus on populations in the Gulf of Mexico.
Phil’s publications:
Dr. Simon Dedman - data scientist
Simon Dedman graduated with a BSc in Marine Biology and Oceanography from the University of Southampton, UK, a MRes in Marine and Fisheries Science from Aberdeen University, UK, and a PhD in Fisheries Science from Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, Ireland. Simon worked as the UK Fisheries Quota Manager between degrees, and as a fisheries researcher for the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership after his PhD. Since then he worked as a postdoctoral researcher for the Farallon Institute, studying multivariate drivers of anchovy population dynamics.
Simon currently works as a postdoctoral researcher at FIU (Florida International University). His research focuses on writing algorithms to identify tuna and shark diving behavior and movements, then using machine learning analytical techniques to determine how these are linked to environmental correlates such as temperature, salinity, eddies, ocean depth, etc. Integrating spatial analysis with machine learning to understand species' movements and habitat preferences has been the central pillar of Simon's research for the past decade, including authoring a software package to help others do similar analyses. The results of his work have been to reveal habitat preferences of elasmobranchs in The Irish Sea, Gulf of Mexico, Bahamas, and North Carolina. Such outputs can be used to improve species management and protections.
Simon’s publications:
Annie Guttridge - President and Director
Annie Guttridge’s history lies heavily in business, including Operations, Events and Account Management. Her entrepreneurial flair saw her own property at just nineteen, lead and manage major projects, events, and budgets before twenty-five, and over the last few years establish nonprofit Saving the Blue with her husband Dr. Tristan Guttridge.
Annie has always dived and possessed a keen interest in the ocean from an incredibly young age. Her real passion and love, however, has always been sharks. With her heart longing for life beneath the waves, she decided to leave her business roots behind to focus fully on making a difference in conservation as a marine advocate, educator, field technician, and underwater photographer. Her work has been featured by popular brands such as National Geographic and Discovery Channel, and she has appeared on many shows for major networks. Her passion and ambition to help save our oceans has seen her write a children’s book (over 5,000 books are currently being donated to children in the Bahamas). Lastly she has over eleven years of field research experience working with a wide variety of sharks, rays, and turtles. Annie has assisted scientists with an array of projects and currently helps lead research expeditions and influences the research goals of Saving the Blue.
Annie’s publications:
Dr. Bryan Keller - Science and Policy Advisor
Bryan Keller is from Tucson, Arizona, where he earned his BSc from the University of Arizona studying Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. He then completed his MSc at Coastal Carolina University, with Dr. Dan Abel, while researching the social behavior of lemon sharks with Dr. Tristan Guttridge at BBFSF. Bryan went on to complete his PhD at Florida State University working under the supervision of Dr. Dean Grubbs. Bryan’s doctoral work focused on the spatiotemporal ecology of the bonnethead shark, with an emphasis on delineating pupping grounds and migratory patterns, and assessing the effect of ocean temperatures on seasonal migrations.
Currently, Bryan is a Foreign Affairs Specialist with NOAA Fisheries. Bryan’s work is focused on international fisheries management. The majority of this work revolves around participating in Regional Fishery Management Organizations (RFMOs), such as the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). Across Bryan’s entire portfolio, he is working on issues including the retention of shortfin mako shark, wildlife trafficking of shark fins, and the management of shark fisheries for dozens of countries around the world.
Bryan’s publications:
Dr. Kara Yopak - Science and Education adviser
Kara Yopak received her B.A. in Biology (with a specialization in marine science) from Boston University and completed her PhD at the University of Auckland in New Zealand in Sensory Neuroethology, before completing postdocs at the University of California San Diego and the University of Western Australia. Over the last 15 years, she has focused on broadening our understanding of the adaptive, developmental, and phylogenetic forces acting on evolution of the brain of sharks and their relatives.
In the ZoMBiE Lab (Zootomical Morphology of the Brain and Its Evolution) at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Kara and her students investigate the evolution of neural systems, particularly the ways in which variation in brain size, structure, and cellular composition underlie complex behaviors and cognitive capacity in fishes. With a collection of over 1000 brains across 50 orders of fishes (they’re not called the ZoMBiE lab for nothing), they utilize a wide range of techniques, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), diceCT, flow cytometry, and histology, to explore variation in the brain within and across species. Differences in the brain are allowing the ZoMBiE Lab to make predictions about sensory and behavioral specialization across species, highlight transitions in life-history stages within a single species, and predict the neural consequences of environmental change.
Kara’s publications:
Emily Spurgeon - Expedition Leader And Field Technician
Emily Spurgeon graduated with a BSc in Biological sciences with a concentration in Marine Biology and Conservation from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California. Upon completion of her BSc, Emily worked as a research assistant and environmental consultant aiding in and overseeing a wide variety of research projects across several taxa including conducting benthic and pelagic surveys, eelgrass restoration in local estuaries, studying climate change induced range expansion in invertebrates, etc. Emily is currently a full-time research technician and pursuing a Master of Science degree at California State University, Long Beach, under the advisement of Dr. Chris Lowe. Emily’s research focuses on the factors underpinning juvenile white shark movement and behavior within their aggregation sites in their Southern California nursery areas. Emily utilizes a variety of technology such as autonomous underwater vehicles, acoustic telemetry, aerial drones, and real time tracking to understand how juvenile white sharks are interacting with their habitat, each other, and the public. Using spatial analysis and neural net models, Emily’s goal is to predict where and when these sharks will appear across Southern California as well as how long they may stay to inform the public on how to share the waves with this charismatic species.
Emily’s publications:
Dr. Maurits Van Zinnicq Bergmann - Science adviser and data scientist
Maurits van Zinnicq Bergmann was awarded a BSc and MSc degree in Marine Biology by the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. He worked closely with Dr. Tristan Guttridge at the BBFS, The Bahamas, as a principal investigator for several years. He recently completed his PhD in Biology in the Predator Ecology and Conservation Lab at Florida International University, United States.
Maurits is a predator ecologist interested in better understanding coexistence and underpinning mechanisms in large marine vertebrate predator communities through the investigation of movement and distribution patterns, and diet composition. And using these data to inform conservation management. His PhD work resulted in the development of a rapid, minimally invasiveand high-resolution method for the assessment of shark diets, and delineation of marine protected areas for elasmobranchs in Bimini, The Bahamas. Current research focuses on identifying biological and environmental drivers of movement, habitat and space use within elasmobranch communities to better understand how such communities respond to change.
Maurits’s publications:
Clark Morgan - Expedition Leader and field technician
Clark Morgan was born and raised in Orlando, Florida and spent long weekends and holidays in the Florida Keys, mesmerized by the marine life and fueled by a passion for underwater photography. He followed his fascination with the underwater realm to Florida State University to complete his BSc in Biology. While at FSU, he worked in the lab of Dr. Dean Grubbs and participated in a field course at the BBFSF where he became enthralled with shark research and met Dr. Tristan Guttridge.
After graduating, Clark traveled to Australia to work on the Shark Bay Ecosystem Research Project in Western Australia with Florida International University. He also contributed to Port Jackson shark research at Macquarie University in Sydney, as well as working on multiple liveaboard ships as a divemaster for ecotourism attractions from great white sharks to the Great Barrier Reef. Upon returning to Florida, he completed his MSc of Biology at the University of North Florida under the tutelage of Dr. Jim Gelsleichter whilst focusing on coastal shark trophic dynamics and ontogenetic habitat shifts. He then helped develop an adult red drum (Sciaenops ocellatus) long-term acoustic telemetry project studying the migration patterns of mature spawners at the University of Florida’s Whitney Laboratory of Marine Bioscience.
Clark is currently pursuing his PhD at Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute where he is investigating Atlantic goliath grouper (Epinephelus itajara) movement ecology and fisheries interactions for more effective management. He is also an avid photographer.
Clark’s publications:
Vital Heim - Expedition Leader and phd student
Vital Heim graduated with a BSc in Biology from the University of Bern, Switzerland and a MSc in Animal Biology from the University of Basel, Switzerland. Vital is currently a PhD student in Zoology at the Zoological Institute of the University of Basel, Switzerland.
Vital’s research focuses on the movement patterns and space-use of great and scalloped hammerheads, Sphyrna mokarran and S. lewini, in the US Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. Using satellite and acoustic telemetry, as well as fishery data analysis, the objective of the project is to reveal the overlap between the US shark bottom and pelagic longline fisheries to discuss the efficiency of potential time-area closures as an adequate conservation strategy for these two hammerhead species.
Vital’s publications:
Lily Rios-Brady - Expedition Leader and field technician
Lily Rios-Brady graduated with a BSc in Marine Sciences and minor in Applied Mathematics. She then completed her MSc in Coastal Marine and Wetland Studies from Coastal Carolina University.
Lily has been passionate about the ocean and what lives within it since she was a little girl. She has pursued a career in marine sciences by working on research projects at prestigious institutions such as the National Aquarium, NOAA, National Institutes of Health- National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke (NIH-NINDS), and Yale University School of Medicine. Her previous research projects include Ocean and Environmental Prediction, understanding squid axons with fluorescent proteins, and bioluminescence in Ctenophores. During her graduate career, she conducted research by utilizing drones as a noninvasive way to understand shark behavior.
Sarontaa Bain - Expedition Leader and field technician
Growing up on Andros Sarontaa was molded into a true waterman clocking over 1,400 days at sea. Over the last seven years Sarontaa has worked as a first mate for a charter company, in addition, he spear fishes and has spent time learning to rod and reel, and fly fish. Sarontaa has assisted with over six major documentary productions, visited local schools to engage the children and talk about his ocean experiences, and has cleaned endless beaches removing trash. Sarontaa can confidently operate a 12ft flat bottom skiff and is in training on a larger vessel. Lastly, with his impressive water skills, he recently worked as a salvage diver - locating old electrical pipes for Bahamas Electric Company through free diving the channels and flats areas.
Sarontaa has been working with Saving the Blue since 2019 and over this time has assisted with a diverse array of tasks. As a Field Technician he has gained experience learning how to deploy various surveying methods and how to safely work with a variety of sharks. Sarontaa now co-leads research expeditions where he assists with the setting up and deploying of research equipment. Lastly he helps to safely secure sharks after capture and assists with the tagging and measuring of the animal.
- Current Projects -
PhD candidate, Basel University
Vital Heim - Great and Scalloped hammerhead sharks
Using satellite telemetry, movement models and fishery data analyses we aim to produce maps that show the large-scale space use of great and scalloped hammerheads.
With this project, we aim to:
Identify the seasonal distribution and relative densities of hammerhead sharks by analyzing data of the US shark bottom longline and US pelagic longline fisheries.
Detail the horizontal movement of great and scalloped hammerhead sharks in the US Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico using fin-mounted Smart Position and Temperature (SPOT) satellite transmitters.
Assess the efficiency of potential time-area closures in reducing fishery-related mortality of great and scalloped hammerhead sharks by combining the output of objectives 1 and 2.
Vital’s publications:
smalltooth sawfish
Improve smalltooth sawfish conservation in Andros through education, outreach, and in-situ data collection that bolsters community and national support for species-specific legislation, protection of critical habitats and the reduction of destructive practices.
With this project, we aim to:
Describe temporal and spatial patterns in sawfish distribution in Andros and identify essential sawfish habitat for protection, particularly nursery grounds.
Develop a network that enables Androsians to report sawfish sightings independent of scientists to expand the infrastructure currently used to monitor sawfish in Andros.
Lead community workshops and school visits to empower Androsians as citizen scientists and conservation stewards.
shark-fisher interactions
We will conduct in-person interviews with fishers in a variety of islands within the Bahamas. Results will include strategies to mitigate shark-fisher interactions; improve dialogue between fishers, researchers and other stakeholders; and identify areas for collaborative research, including depredation reduction methods. Data will also be used to support shark conservation in the Bahamas.
The first stage of this project aims to:
Identify prevalence and pervasiveness of shark interactions in Bahamian fisheries, impacts sharks have on fishers, and how fishers currently mitigate these.
Determine fishers’ perceptions and opinions towards sharks, and current management strategies for sharks in the Bahamas.
Assess if fishers recognize the economic and ecological importance of sharks, and that sharks are protected across the Bahamas.
Marine Science Student, BAMSI
Skye Minnis
Skye regularly assists Saving the Blue on a wide variety of topics and will start her own research project with us later this year. We’re excited to see what the future holds!
Marine Science Student, BAMSI
Tayshaun Burrows - Androsian Internship
Tayshaun is learning:
Research techniques for surveying sharks and rays including setup, deployment and maintenance of block rigs, polyball fishing and baited remote underwater videos (BRUVs).
Shark processing methods and equipment, including safely securing animals for measurement, sex determination, biological sampling and tagging (e.g. individual identification and tracking).
Species ID: sharks and other common marine animals of The Bahamas.
Environmental sampling: including taking water temperature, salinity and dissolved oxygen.
Boat safety and basic seamanship.
Data recording and data entry specifically pertaining to BRUV methods.
Preliminary data visualization, analysis and interpretation ready for student presentation.
Collaborators and supporters
Dr. Raveenia Hanna-Roberts, The Bahamas Agriculture and Marine Science Institute (BAMSI)
Supported by Fahlo
Thank you
Saving the Blue would like to acknowledge their network of knowledgable, and experienced research technicians and assistants, in addition to all who have assisted with our ongoing research efforts.
