Chris Free

I am a postdoc working with Chris Costello and Steve Gaines in the Sustainable Fisheries Group at UC Santa Barbara. I completed my PhD with Olaf Jensen in the Department of Marine & Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University in March 2018.

My research uses quantitative and interdisciplinary methods to explore solutions to aquatic conservation and management problems. Currently, I am working on small-scale freshwater fisheries conservation in Mongolia, the development and testing of data-poor stock assessment methods, and global-scale meta-analyses of environmental, biological, and socio-economic drivers of marine fisheries productivity.

My interest in quantitative ecology has its roots in tropical forests and I maintain active research projects on the ecology and management of big-leaf mahogany and other tropical timber species in South and Central America. I am interested in continuing to collaborate on ecology and management questions across ecosystems.