Our Team

RUSSELL MOFFITT - Program Manager

Russell Moffitt graduated from Dartmouth College with a B.A. in Environmental and Evolutionary Biology. Prior to coming to Marine Conservation Institute, he worked in Hawaii with the NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, conducting oceanographic and ecological research at coral reef ecosystems across the Pacific, including places where Marine Conservation Institute works to protect such as the Pacific Remote Island Areas and the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Russell has also conducted reef biodiversity assessments with the Census of Marine Life (CoML) Census of Coral Reefs project and has recently been developing and deploying a standardized method to assess cryptic biodiversity on reefs worldwide using advanced molecular techniques. Russell is particularly interested in the interactions between marine biological communities and their physical environments and how those processes are affected by climate change. At Marine Conservation Institute, Russell works on identifying biological hot spots on the high seas and other areas in need of protection, and works as a member of our team in analyzing geospatial data, particularly on issues related to marine spatial planning.

BETH PIKE - Database Manager

Beth Pike received her B.S. from Long Island University/Southampton in Biology and earned her M.E.M. at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment in 2008 where her thesis work tied the movements of critically endangered right whales and the tidal movement of their prey in the Bay of Fundy. She also earned a Certificate of Geospatial Analysis from the Duke University Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab. Beth has worked as a naturalist and mate throughout Alaska, British Columbia, the South Pacific, Mexico, and Hawaii and spent years conducting research on right whales in the North Atlantic and humpback whales in the North Pacific. Since joining the Marine Conservation Institute in 2011, Beth has supported many facets of the organization. Currently her work is focused on the outreach, communication and data input for our online atlas of global marine protected areas, www.MPAtlas.org.