Savannah Laliberte

After growing up in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, I moved to Hawai‘i in August of 2015 to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in Marine Biology at Hawaiʻi Pacific University. During my time as an undergraduate at HPU, I was a voluntary laboratory assistant on the Seabird Tissue Archival and Monitoring Project (STAMP), a collaboration between the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and HPU to investigate environmental contaminates in seabird eggs. In addition to that, I participated in the Our Project in Hawaii’s Intertidal (OPIHI) internship through the University of Hawai‘i, Manoa Campus. During this internship, my cohort and I used stable isotopes as a tool to examine mullet food web dynamics in Heʻeia Fishpond.

Building upon my work done during the OPIHI internship, I decided to continue my education with HPU’s Master of Science Marine Science Program (MSMS) and my current research focuses on assessing mullet recruitment on a spatiotemporal scale within Kāne’ohe Bay. As an MSMS thesis-track student, I look forward to conducting science with a purpose that will push the boundaries of scientific knowledge, while also producing results that are directly tangible to local Hawaiian communities and the public.

November 2021