Skip to main content

People

Sarah Borsetti

Co-PI / Fisheries Researcher

Sarah Borsetti is a Fisheries Researcher at Rutgers University's Haskin Shellfish Research Laboratory, where she conducts applied research to support the commercial and recreational fishing industries in New Jersey and the broader Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region. Her work focuses on understanding the interactions between fished stock population dynamics and environmental factors. As a Postdoctoral Researcher at Rutgers University, she investigated the complex relationships among commercial shellfish fisheries, offshore wind energy development, and climate change. She holds a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolution from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ.

Douglas Zemeckis

Co-PI / Associate Professor, Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources

Doug Zemeckis serves as a County Agent II (Associate Professor) with Rutgers Cooperative Extension. In this role, he conducts educational programming and applied research to address local issues related to fisheries, aquaculture, and marine resources management. His work focuses on Ocean, Atlantic, and Monmouth Counties, as well as other coastal counties in New Jersey as needed. Doug has a B.S. in Marine Sciences from Rutgers University and a Ph.D. in Marine Science and Technology from the School for Marine Science and Technology (SMAST) at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. 

Joey O’Brien

Laboratory Researcher

Joey O'Brien is a laboratory researcher at the Haskin Shellfish Research lab where he assists in field research related to fisheries management, stock assessment, coastal ecology, aquaculture, and offshore development. After graduating from Towson University in 2017 with a Bachelor's in Biology and minors in Chemistry and Molecular Biology he went to work as a fisheries observer in the Alaska Observer program. In 2019, he left the observer program and started at the Haskin lab as a seasonal field technician helping out on a variety of projects from wild caught oyster stock assessment to shoreline restoration. After his seasonal position ended, he...

Andre Ascura

Laboratory Researcher

Andre joined the lab back in 2022 shortly after graduating from Rutgers University with a bachelor's degree in marine biology. He supports applied fisheries research and long-term monitoring projects within the lab. He is interested in the application of non-extractive optical survey methods to better compliment current fisheries monitoring efforts for the Mid-Atlantic/Northeast region. Starting Fall 2025, he will be enrolled in the Ecology and Evolution Ph.D. program with Rutgers University.

Jason Morson

Associate Research Scientist

Jason worked as an Associate Research Scientist at the Rutgers University Haskin Shellfish Research Laboratory. Morson has conducted cooperative research with commercial and recreational fishing industry members and stakeholders in New Jersey and throughout the Mid- Atlantic region for over a decade. This has included collaborating with fishermen to conduct applied research on summer flounder, black sea bass, sea scallops, surf clams, and oysters. Morson is the lead stock assessment scientist for the New Jersey Delaware Bay oyster stock assessment and has expertise in several relevant fields including fishery-independent survey design and analysis, fisheries ecology and stock assessment modeling. Morson co-lead the bottom trawl and structured habitat survey of the Ørsted Ocean Wind 1 fisheries monitoring plan. Jason joined the NEFSC in 2024 as the Hook & Line Survey Lead with the Cooperative Research Branch.

Ruhika Bhattacharya

RIOS Intern

Ru joined the lab as a part of an undergraduate internship from 2023-2024 while pursuing a bachelor's degree in marine biology from the University of New England. Her research focused on the Ørsted offshore wind development sampling data and investigating the importance of multi-gear usage when sampling for offshore fisheries surveys. As of Fall 2024, Ru is a researcher in the Garvey Lab at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. She leads the electrofishing and gillnetting efforts on the Illinois and Wabash rivers. Her broader interests lie in understanding how the changing climate is impacting the physiology and movement behavior of vulnerable species. 

Nicole Fox

Graduate Associate

Nicole worked for the lab in the summer of 2023, where she primarily supported ongoing non-extractive optical surveys in addition to monthly monitoring of oyster stocks in the Delaware Bay. She went on to accept a Laboratory Technician position at the Rutgers University Marine Field Station in September of 2023, and in the fall of 2024, she started in the Ecology and Evolution PhD program in the Grothues Lab at Rutgers University. Her research is focused on understanding predator-prey interactions of commercially important finfish and improving the effectiveness of applied diet analysis as a tool in ecosystem-based fisheries management. 

Colin Sabol

Seasonal Technician

Colin started at the late in Spring 2024 assisting with Delaware Bay Oyster Stock Assessment program. This involved participating in monthly dock monitoring programs, as well as logistics prep for resampling and random sampling surveys the stock assessment workshops. He also assisted in processing video footage from previous offshore wind monitoring surveys, both manual scoring and building AI image annotation libraries. Hs is now currently in service to the Peace Corps, assisting in developing aquaponic systems and education in Africa.

Storm Moya

Seasonal Technician

Storm Moya participated in the Borsetti lab from Summer 2023 to Winter 2024 as an Seasonal technician. Here she worked with various image detection systems to construct a database library for artificial intelligence recognition, also aiding in monitoring surveys for economically important species abundance on the New Jersey coast line. Storm is now currently employed at Princeton University as an Animal Care Technician. Here she maintains both terrestrial and aquatic species for various research studies through husbandry, veterinarian assistance, and observational monitoring. She plans to attend graduate school at California State University Long Beach for Marine Biology.

Eli Schweitzer

RIOS Intern

Eli completed the RIOs REU summer internship in 2024 while completing a bachelor's degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at University of California, Santa Cruz. He researched morphometric differences between the Atlantic surf clam Spisula solidissima solidissima and the southern subspecies Spisula solidissima similis. He is currently studying urban conservation issues such as the pattern of bird-window collisions across the California bay area.