The Team
Agnes Mittermayr
Director
Agnes Mittermayr developed her love for seagrasses in the Baltic Sea more than 15 years ago and has since worked on both sides of the Atlantic. She is interested in the biodiversity and connections within seagrass meadows, such as food webs and bentho-pelagic coupling. She is actively involved in monitoring several SeagrassNet sites in New England, USA and hopes to visit as many SeagrassNet sites as possible during her tenure as director.
Jon Lefcheck
Researcher
Jon Lefcheck has studied seagrasses for over 15 years, from his home base in the Chesapeake Bay to countries around the world. He is particularly interested in the services that healthy seagrass ecosystems provide to the benefit of both nature and people, and how to sustain these benefits in the face of a changing world. He has participated in the largest seagrass restoration in the world in South Bay, Virginia, and his finding that nutrient reduction policies led to the unprecedented recovery of underwater grasses in the Chesapeake Bay, USA received the Cozzarelli Prize from the National Academy of Sciences. His work on seagrasses has been featured in popular outlets such as The Conversation, The Washington Post, and Smithsonian Magazine.
Jeff Gaeckle
Researcher
Jeff Gaeckle has nearly three decades of experience in seagrass ecology, monitoring and restoration in the northwestern Atlantic and northeastern Pacific. He co-leads a multi-faceted team of scientists that monitor and investigate stressors to seagrass and kelp throughout Washington State to guide project development and management policies. His research focuses on improvements to seagrass restoration success and understanding climate effects on seagrass resilience.
Alyssa Novak
Researcher
Alyssa Novak is research faculty at Boston University. She works in a variety of temperate and tropical coastal ecosystems with a focus on seagrass ecology, blue carbon storage, and restoration. She has won the EPA merit award and NOAA Nancy Foster Scholar award for her work with seagrasses. Alyssa serves as seagrass specialist for the International Union for Conservation of Nature and is actively involved in monitoring SeagrassNet sites in New England and Belize.
Holly Plaisted
Researcher
Holly Plaisted is a seagrass biologist for the Northeast Coastal and Barrier Inventory and Monitoring Network of the US National Park Service where she leads seagrass and estuarine water quality monitoring at six National Park units across the northeast US. She became involved with SeagrassNet as an undergraduate student at the University of New Hampshire 2006, and has not stopped since! She now oversees the implementation of SeagrassNet monitoring at five National Park Service sites.