Lyall Bellquist

Fisheries Scientist
Marine
[email protected]

Lyall works as a marine fisheries scientist working to improve management and conservation of marine resources in California. His research combines collaboration, innovation, and quantitative methods to ensure long-term health and sustainability of marine ecosystems, fisheries, and fishing communities. Lyall works collaboratively with multiple stakeholder groups to identify fisheries data gaps, and design and implement research programs to fill these gaps. This allows fisheries managers to make more efficient, informed, and effective decisions.

Prior to the Conservancy, Lyall was a graduate student at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and a National Research Council post-doctoral fellow at the NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center. He developed two large-scale collaborative fisheries research programs in partnership with the commercial and recreational fishing communities, fisheries managers, non-profit representatives, and other fisheries researchers. These programs are now serving as successful models for future fisheries research, and resulted in ongoing improvements to local fisheries conservation efforts. Lyall holds a Ph.D. in marine biology from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego and an M.S. in biology from CSU Long Beach.  

Research websites: www.cooperativefishtagging.org, www.lajollaarray.org, and www.stattn.org

What Lyall is working on now:

I am currently working on: 1) a collaborative red abalone data collection program that will guide the implementation of the first harvest control rules in the statewide California recreational fishery, 2) a manuscript documenting the reduction of protected species bycatch via the development and management of a quota risk pool in the west coast groundfish fishery, and 3) a collaborative program to develop and scale alternative, low-bycatch fishing gear types in the California offshore drift gillnet swordfish fishery.