Our Team
melissa.cronin@umassd.edu
igarfield@umassd.edu
(they/them)
Madeline is a Research Scientist in the Shared Seas Lab working on the conservation genetics of Pacific manta and devil rays project. Their research applies population genomics tools to guide conservation, aquaculture, and sustainable fishing, particularly in elasmobranchs and shellfish. Madeline is a PhD candidate at Northeastern University’s Marine Science Center and a Smithsonian PhD Fellow investigating genomic targets for selective breeding, adaptive genes, structural variants in the eastern oyster. Their recent work also uncovered the mislabeling of endangered sharks in southern New England fish markets.
Melissa Cronin, PhD
(she/her)
Melissa is an Assistant Professor in the School for Marine Science and Technology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. She is an interdisciplinary marine conservation scientist, writer, and equity practitioner dedicated to developing and implementing innovative solutions for nature and people, especially in fisheries settings. She is co-founder of FieldFutures, an organization that trains people to prevent harassment and assault in scientific fieldwork, and Mobula Conservation, which leads scientific research and participatory conservation for manta and devil rays in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.
Madeline Eppley
Bella Garfield
(she/her)
Bella is a Master’s student in the Shared Seas Lab and has a B.S. in Marine Science from UC Santa Cruz. Her research background includes studying philopatry within northern elephant seal colonies, avian alarm calls in the Amazon Rainforest, and ecological soundscape analysis in the mid-Atlantic with NOAA's Passive Acoustic Branch. For her Master’s project, she will focus on mobulid bycatch interactions in Pacific tuna fisheries, aiming to understand the underlying drivers and evaluate mitigation techniques.