Dr. Bob Van Dolah

I am a nominee to serve on the SECOORA Board as one of the members representing a Public Agency/Non-Profit/Other category. I will be representing the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, Marine Resources Division as a SECOORA member. My position at the SCDNR-MRD is Director of the Marine Resources Research Institute. The Institute conducts extensive monitoring and research programs throughout the southeast on the continental shelf and deeper water habitats, and state-wide in South Carolina’s estuarine and near-coastal waters. A significant portion of the Institute’s offshore monitoring objectives are to collect the fishery- independent data on both managed and non-managed species for NMFS through the MARMAP and SEAMAP programs. These programs also collect extensive hydrographic data at a large number of sites throughout the region that can be integrated with the more limited, but continuous, monitoring platforms to be supported by SECOORA. Monitoring in the state’s estuarine waters includes collecting real-time water quality data at the ACE Basin NERR as part of the SWMP initiative, state-wide data collection on estuarine habitat health, and numerous environmental and fishery-independent monitoring efforts on economically valuable species. Over the past 29 years, I have been either the Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator on more that 60 studies dealing these issues, with many of the studies involving multi-institutional collaborations. This research has given me an excellent understanding of the southeast coastal region and important management issues. My efforts on the SECOORA board would be to help ensure that SECOORA initiatives provide the most relevant data to these coastal and fishery management issues.