Editor-in-Chief
MUDJEKEEWIS D. SANTOS 
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Mudjekeewis Dalisay Santos, or “Doc Mudjie,” is a fisheries scientist and a marine biologist widely recognized for his work on aquatic species genetics, assessment, and policy studies to support fisheries management and aquaculture for food security, biodiversity conservation, and climate change adaptation. Dr. Santos is a Career Scientist IV at the National Fisheries Research and Development Institute and an Academician of the National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST) Philippines.
In recognition of his significant contribution to the advancement of fisheries science and management in the country, a marine fish was named after him (Chelidoperca santosi) in 2015 by two of the world’s leading fish taxonomists, Dr. Jeffrey Williams and Dr. Kent Carpenter. Also, in the same year, an Islet in Eleven Islands, Zamboanga City, was named Mudjie Wise Key in his honor by the people of Barangay Dita for his scientific contribution and presence in the area.
National Fisheries Research and Development Institute
National Academy of Science and Technology - Philippines
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Dr. Mary Jane A. Amar is a University Researcher and a Career Scientist 1 at the Institute of Aquaculture, College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, University of the Philippines Visayas. She obtained her M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Aquatic Biosciences from Tokyo University of Fisheries, Japan. Her research interests include fish nutrition, feed biotechnology, and bivalve hatchery.
Dr. Frolan A. Aya is a Scientist based at the Binangonan Freshwater Station of SEAFDEC Aquaculture Department. He obtained his Ph.D. in Environmental Science from Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan. He was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Fish Nutrition at Pukyong National University, Busan, Republic of Korea. His research focuses on developing culture techniques and aquaculture feeds for indigenous freshwater fish species.
Carlo is currently a Senior Scientist in Fish Health at Nofima, The Norwegian Institute of Food, Fisheries and Aquaculture Research. He earned his Ph.D. in Aquatic Biosciences from the University of Nordland (Norway) in 2014. He conducted his first postdoctoral training at the Technical University of Denmark. After securing the Jacob Blaustein Fellowship, he moved to the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel for his second Postdoc. His research focuses on fish mucosal immunology and physiology. He is interested in the cellular and molecular barrier organization at the mucosa and how these barriers are regulated by biological factors, production systems, environmental parameters, and operational practices.
Dr. Janice Ragaza is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at the Ateneo de Manila University, where she has been a faculty member since 2013. She teaches undergraduate- and graduate-level Biology and Natural Science courses. In addition, she researches alternative dietary ingredients for aquacultured fish and shrimp species in the Philippines. She is a current and active Editorial Board Member of the Elsevier journal, Animal Feed Science and Technology.
Mr. Len Garces has more than 30 years of extensive fisheries and aquaculture research and development experience. In August 2020, Mr. Garces joined the Pacific Rim Innovation and Management Exponents, Inc. (PRIMEX), a leading full-service international management consulting firm based in the Philippines, as Vice President for Technical Services. From 2015 to 2020, Mr. Garces led multi-country teams in the implementation of a regional development project in Southeast Asia, particularly in the integration and implementation of an Ecosystems Approach to Fisheries Management (EAFM) on the national and regional levels of the USAID Oceans and Fisheries Partnership (USAID Oceans). In addition, from 1990 to 2015, Mr. Garces worked with WorldFish (an international research institute also known as International Center for Living Aquatic Resources Management or ICLARM) to lead and support multi-disciplinary projects on coastal fisheries management program implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and research on resource assessment and management. He earned his B.S. Fisheries degree from the University of the Philippines (UP) in 1984 and M.S. Marine Biology from the UP - Marine Science Institute in 1988. He has published and edited over 70 scientific articles, volumes, and books during his career.
Dr. Harold Monteclaro is an Associate Professor of Fisheries Science at the University of the Philippines Visayas. A UP Scientist II, he is trained in the fields of fish sensory physiology and behavior, fisheries biology, and capture fisheries.
Mr. Geronimo T. Silvestre is a recognized fisheries and coastal resources research, policy, and management expert in Southeast Asia, particularly the Philippines. He has over 43 years of work experience in his field of expertise. He was a member of the faculty of the College of Fisheries, University of the Philippines from 1978 to 1988; was a Research Scientist at the International Center for Living Aquatic Resources Management (ICLARM), now WorldFish Center (1988-2002); and managed various donor-funded fisheries and coastal resources research and management projects in the Philippines and Southeast Asia (2002-2018). He earned his B.S. Fisheries (Major in Marine Fisheries) degree from the University of the Philippines in 1978 and his M.S. Marine Science (Major in Biology and Living Resources) degree from the Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science (RSMAS), University of Miami in 1984. He has authored and edited over 90 scientific articles, volumes, and books during the course of his 43-year career.
Dr. Jaaman has been involved in marine endangered species conservation work, particularly on dugongs and coastal cetaceans, for many Malaysian projects since 1996. The projects have included surveys and EIA/ERA consultations on the population ecology of dugongs, Irrawaddy and Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins, whale shark, and their by-catch in fisheries. He is currently the Head of the Marine Endangered Species (MES) Program, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT), and a Technical Advisor to the National Marine Mammal Stranding Network and UNEP/GEF Project on The Conservation of Dugongs and Their Habitats in Malaysia. In addition, he is the Co-Chairman of the IOC/WESTPAC project “Regional Study of Marine Endangered Species (Mammals and Sea Turtles) in the Tropical Asia for Effective Conservation (MESTA)” and the Principal Researcher and Coordinator of the project in Malaysia and Brunei Darussalam.
Dr. Armi Torres is currently teaching graduate courses in Environmental Science at the Department of Biological Sciences, MSU-Iligan Institute of Technology. Her research interest includes freshwater fish taxonomy, biodiversity assessment, and aquatic species conservation. She has an extensive research experience in biodiversity informatics at ICLARM/WorldFish, FishBase Information Network and Research Group (FIN), Inc., and Quantitative Aquatics, Inc. through FishBase, a global information system on the biology of all known fishes of the world. She has conducted assessments of the conservation status of freshwater fishes for the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. In addition, she participated in organizing training on freshwater fish identification and conservation in collaboration with national and international partners.
Dr. Maralit is the current director of the DNA Sequencing Core Facility. He completed his Ph.D. studies at the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology and his Post-doctoral research Fellowship at Chulalongkorn University. He returned to the Philippines to continue his research on understanding shrimp and invertebrate immune systems and apply his experiences in high throughput sequencing and microarray analysis in the Philippine setting.
Dr. Ivane R. Pedrosa-Gerasmio earned her Ph.D. in Applied Marine Biosciences (Major in Applied Bio-Engineering) from Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, Japan, in 2019. She is currently an Assistant Professor in Marine Science at Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology. Her fields of scientific interest include fish population genetics, fisheries biology, and shrimp immunology.
Dr. Maria Rowena Eguia obtained her Ph.D. in Agricultural Science (major in Fish Population Genetics) from the Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, in 2004. She has won two Elvira O. Tan Memorial Awards as Best Published Paper in Aquaculture from the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and Development. Her primary research interests are the population and quantitative genetics of tropical aquaculture species such as tilapia, freshwater prawn, milkfish, abalone, mangrove crab, and Anguillid eels.
Rene A. Abesamis has more than 20 years of research experience in marine ecology and conservation in the Philippines. He obtained his Bachelor of Science in Biology at the University of the Philippines Diliman and his Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy in Marine Biology at James Cook University, Australia. He is currently a Research Officer and Adjunct Faculty at Silliman University. His research focuses on coral reef fish ecology and the effects of marine protected areas. He has published 38 scientific papers as of 2021. In 2013, he was recognized as an Outstanding Young Scientist by the National Academy of Science and Technology in the Philippines. In 2019 he received the Australian Alumni Excellence Award.
She is currently an Associate Professor of the Department of Biology and Environmental Science (DBES) at the University of the Philippines Cebu.
Dr. Wilfredo (“Al”) Licuanan is a Full Professor of the Biology Department and University Fellow of De La Salle University (DLSU). He is also a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences and a recipient of the 2018 Environmental Science Award and the 2021 Outstanding Book Award of the National Academy of Science and Technology. Dr. Al has been surveying and monitoring reefs for over thirty years. He has led research teams to many previously unstudied reefs from all around the country, including the Kalayaan Islands (where he discovered a coral species new to science) and the Pacific Ocean coasts from Luzon to Mindanao.
Demian Willette is an assistant professor of biology at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. His Ph.D. is in Environmental Health Science from UCLA. In addition, he has held multiple postdocs, including with Old Dominion University and the Philippine National Fisheries Research and Development Institute, examining cryptic speciation and fish population genetics. Dr. Willette was also a visiting Fulbright Scholar in the Philippines on the topic of seafood traceability and environmental DNA (eDNA) methods. His lab’s research areas are applied ecology, conservation, sustainable fisheries, and environmental policy.
Dr. Wang started her career as a shrimp researcher in 2000 as a Master's student and continued to obtain her Ph.D. in 2007 from National Taiwan University (NTU). Later she joined National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) as one of the young faculty members and established her own lab, the Laboratory of Translational Aquabiology (TLAB). Dr. Wang and her team have published over seventy SCI research papers since 2008. Dr. Wang is recognized as an outstanding young researcher and has received several awards from her university, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) in Taiwan, as well as The World Academy of Sciences for the advancement of science in developing countries (TWAS).
Dr. Ephrime B. Metillo is recognized for his important contributions in the field of Philippine marine biology, ecology, and participatory biodiversity assessment being a NAST Outstanding Young Scientist Awardee in 2007 and an NRCP Achievement (Biological Sciences) Awardee in 2017. He is a Professor of the Department of Marine Science, former Director for Research, and currently the Dean of the College of Science and Mathematics at Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology. He is a former Director of the CHED Zonal Research Center for Regions 9, 12, and ARMM. Now he is serving as the current Chairperson of the NRCP Mindanao Regional Cluster. He is a member of the Harmful Jellyfish Group and Coral Reef Recruitment and Biodiversity Group of the UNESCO International Oceanographic Commission of the Western Pacific Region, and Lead Person of the Philippine Zooplankton Group under the Southeast Asian Biodiversity Research Programme of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Among his significant contributions are studies on food webs, plankton, shrimps, fish, jellyfish in general, and specifically on the largely unexplored aspect of the trophic link between zooplankton production and fisheries.
Dr. Alice Joan G. Ferrer is a Professor and a Scientist from the University of the Philippines Visayas. She holds a Master's and Ph.D. (Economics) degrees from the School of Economics, University of the Philippines. Her interests are in health economics, fisheries and aquaculture social sciences, policy analysis, gender, climate-smart agriculture, and governance, among others. She has peer-reviewed journal articles, chapters in books, and a book. Currently, she is the Dean of UPV-College of Arts and Sciences, President of the Asian Fisheries Society, National Deputy Director of the Economy and Environment Group Philippines, Visayas Regional Representative of the Philippine Economic Society, Chair of the Regional Ethics Monitoring Board (Western Visayas), and the Executive Director of Western Visayas Health Research and Development Consortium of the DOST-PCHRD.
Dr. Muallil is currently the Director of the Office of Continuing Education and Extension Services (OCEANeS and a faculty member from the College of Fisheries. He is a distinguished marine scientist who has been awarded Ten Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) by the Gerry Roxas Foundation and Outstanding Young Scientist (OYS) of the Philippines by the National Academy of Science and Technology, both in 2016, for his exemplary works in marine science particularly in the fields of coastal resource management, small-scale fisheries, and coral reef ecology.
Dr. Jeffrey T. Williams, Ichthyologist, Research Associate in Fishes at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and Research Associate in Zoology at the Philippine National Museum of Natural History; conducts research on the systematics, taxonomy, and biogeography of marine fishes.