Overview

The Curacao Marine Research Centre (CMRC), consisting of a consortium of three local companies, being the Curacao Sea Aquarium, Substation Curacao and RV Chapman Shipping recently received a grant from the European Union’s RESEMBID program. With the grant the Queen Conch Hatchery hopes to reach its goal to stop the dwindling Queen Conch population on Curacao by releasing cultured juvenile Queen Conch and egg masses to strengthen the local, natural population; to improve fisheries regulations and enforcement; and to provide juveniles for potential local or regional, commercial aquaculture companies or other regional population enhancement programs.

For the duration of the project (19 months), the Queen Conch hatchery is looking for an experienced Queen Conch population expert to advice the project team (which includes marine biologists) on a standard method to measure the size and structure of the Queen Conch population specific locations. This method should be easily repeated on a yearly basis and cost effective.

The goal of these measurements is to be able to prove the success of population enhancement activities (outplanting, fishery regulation improvement and improved enforcement) which are realized in the project.

The Queen Conch population expert will advise the project team on:

• The design of a standard method to measure the size and the structure of a Queen Conch population in situ that is replicable in different locations.
• The technical details of field inventories and observations
• The processing of the inventory data
• The discussion and conclusions drawn from the data analysis.

Requirements:

• Master’s degree in marine biology or related study, preferably a PhD in this field
• Minimum of 10 years research experience in the field of Queen Conch biology
• Good written communication skills in English
• Software knowledge for data analysis.
• No need to visit or to be based on Curacao, advice to be given via digital media

Number of hours:

• 16 hours of online advice: (video) calls and email