Jerelle Jesse

Jerelle joined the University of Maine as a PhD student in Dr. Lisa Kerr’s lab in the Fall of 2023. She is broadly interested in fisheries stock assessment and quantitative methods to inform sustainable management and address climate challenges.

As a NMFS-Sea Grant Population Dynamics Fellow, Jerelle will be characterizing current and alternative approaches to defining biological reference points in a changing environment then assessing the performance of those approaches using simulation modeling. This fellowship will help her achieve both educational and career goals by providing insight to federal stock assessments, close mentorship from science center staff, and connections with peers who have interest in similar research. She is most excited to work closely with her NMFS mentor Dr. Tim Miller to learn more about innovative stock assessment methods.

Before coming to the University of Maine, Jerelle attended the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (BS, 2015), where she studied behavioral response of invasive crab larvae to chemical cues. She then worked as a fisheries technician for the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries before attending graduate school. At the University of Maryland Chesapeake Biological Lab (MS, 2020) her work focused on quantifying drivers of disease in striped bass and identifying the consequences of increasing natural mortality on biological reference points. After graduating, Jerelle remained at the Chesapeake Biological Lab assisting with a management strategy evaluation for eastern oysters before joining Lisa Kerr’s lab at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. While at GMRI Jerelle worked on numerous simulation studies to inform fisheries management, as well as statistical analysis of fisheries and climate data.