Team

Director

FAU HBOI

For more than 40-years Dr. Megan Davis, Research Professor and lead for FAU's Harbor Branch Queen Conch Lab, has been studying the queen conch life cycle and innovating ways to save the species. She has become the world’s foremost expert on queen conch aquaculture, or farming, and has designed, implemented, and operated community-based queen conch hatcheries throughout the Caribbean. Her philosophy is to work in the communities with the fisherfolk and citizens to empower them to grow their own conch for restoration and conservation. Her work enhances the blue economy by providing jobs for local staff and diversified incomes for fisherfolk. In addition, she proposes that restoration of this keystone herbivore into seagrass habitats will assist with carbon sequestration, aiding in important international climate change mitigation efforts. Dr. Davis and her team are currently involved in projects in Florida, The Bahamas, Puerto Rico, Curacao, Jamaica and several other Caribbean nations. More than ever, communities are seeking her knowledge as a way to bring a solution to the escalating species decline. 

Assistant Director

FAU HBOI

Becky Holt is a senior executive and holds an M.B.A. in Sustainable Business. She has over a decade of experience in the aquaculture and conservation nonprofit sector. Her experience in marketing, organizational strategy, and community building has introduced her to countless international seafood operators -- from artisanal fishers to the leading aquaculture producers. She helps to develop partnerships for the Queen Conch Lab that will lead to a conch farm in every Caribbean Nation.

Aquaculture Specialist

FAU HBOI

Robinson Bazurto holds a B.S. degree in Marine Biology and an M.B.A. in International Business and is currently in the second year of his Project Management Ph.D. Mr. Bazurto has nearly 35 years of project management experience in the fields of aquaculture and water treatment. Before joining our team, Mr. Bazurto served as production manager for both shrimp and fish cultivation operations, both in the US and abroad, and then as a Director of Operations for Hydromentia, a water treatment technology; as R&D Laboratory Operation Manager at Ziegler; and currently as R&D Aquaculture Operations Manager at Pebble Labs. Mr. Bazurto’s extensive project management and system operations experience with a variety of technologies provides a real-time approach for system optimization.

Research and Education Coordinator

FAU HBOI

Amanda Matthews is a recent graduate from Florida Atlantic University where she earned a M.Sc. in Biology under Dr. Megan Davis. She is interested in sustainable food systems, and her graduate work investigated how frequent harvesting affects the nutritional content and biomass production of an aquacultured Florida native sea vegetable, Suaeda linearis. Before undertaking her M.Sc., she worked as an environmental educator where she promoted the conservation of Florida’s native flora and fauna. Her passion for restoring wild food sources led her to join the Queen Conch lab in 2023.