“There’s A Lot Of Power In Being Able To Know That You Have 700 People Around The World Rooting For You”, An Interview With Marine Ecologist, & Diversity Advocate, Dr. Alexandra Davis
- The Persaud Catalog
- Oct 17
- 22 min read
Updated: Oct 21
Recently, we were extraordinarily pleased to sit down with Dr. Alexandra Davis, a marine ecologist, marine biologist, diversity advocate, scientific diver, & professor!
Dr. Alexandra Davis is an ocean researcher, invasive species expert, scientific diver, marine spatial ecologist, cat enthusiast, & Professor of Biology at California State University, Northridge. She is well known for her research on invasive species, her research on spatial ecology, & her nonprofit advocacy with BWEEMS.
In today’s interview, we sit down with Alex to discuss her research in spatial ecology, her research with invasive species, her nonprofit advocacy, & her advice to marine biologists & ocean researchers early in their careers, in a comprehensive 18-question interview. Before delving into today’s interview, please note everything said has been edited for clarity, & that the opinions of our interviewee do not necessarily reflect the opinions & values of our organization. With that being said, let us delve into the contents of the interview!
Questions About Her Passion:
1. What sparked your passion for marine biology, & the ocean as a whole?
I think it's a combination of a classic kind of both in the 80’s, & 90’s, & it’s a little bit of fascination with Lisa Frank Stationery. Just seeing dolphins, rainbows, & things like that. In addition to that, I was enthralled with National Geographic Specials, on public television, & PBS. I’m originally from New Mexico, so a desert state. Anytime some sort of special would come on TV that was focused on the water, specifically the marine environment, it always just captivated my attention because it was something so other than what I grew up around.
2. Was there any particular person, place, moment, or piece of media that assisted in sparking your passion?
I suppose one of the things that got me interested was a series of magazines for kids that my mom would order. I think maybe it was Zoo For Kids, or Nat Geo For Kids? I remember that I got one of the sharks & that was just so fascinating to me. I vividly remember flipping through one. Also, when the TV guide would come out, I would see what National Geographic Special was on. Even though I don’t work with sharks or any large organisms now, that is kind of what drew me to marine science. Those charismatic megafauna, as we call them, do a really good job of drawing people in & having a connection to the ocean.
3. What is your favourite marine or terrestrial animal personally, & what is your favourite marine or terrestrial animal that you have worked on?
My favourite animal is cats! I’m a big cat person, however, I don’t work with those in any way shape, or form. I do work with fish often, a lot of the work that I do now & in the past has been focused on fish ecology. Studying both how fish communities interact, & how fish are put together, as well as individual fish species has been a large part of my career. I also enjoy this group of fish colloquially known as damselfish. I like to think of them as what I call the old men of the sea. They’re often algal farmers, so they’ll have territories where they guard their algal patches, & they’re very aggressive. They are about the size of your hand on the larger end, & other times they’re only about 5 centimeters large. They’ll come out & bite you if you come onto their territory, so they’re like “Get off my lawn”! I just love what I’m assigning them as personalities, & their aggressive nature. I’ve done some studies with them, & I find them fascinating.
4. What sparked your passion for Diversity, & Inclusion, within Ecological, Marine, & Evolutionary sciences?
I don’t know if anything sparked my passion, but I think the work that I do in that area was born out of necessity. Being someone who is often categorized as a marginalized person, nobody was doing the work in a lot of institutions that I was at. So, in order for me to feel as if I had a space in those places, or feel that I was being treated equitably, I would work with people who were of similar minds to create spaces. At first, it was a survival technique, “How do I make it through to the next week, month, or day? How do I make it to the next level of my career?”.
It's building those support mechanisms, building those institutional policies, that make it so that you have equal or equitable chances to have the same opportunities that other folks do.
Questions About Her Work in Marine Science:
5. Prior to entering marine science, you pursued your Bachelor’s degree in English. May I ask what inspired you to make the change, & leap into the field of marine science?
Interestingly enough, it wasn’t a change into marine science, it was kind of an opportunity that I didn’t take advantage of. Early in my educational career, I had a bad experience with a science class. It basically turned me off from thinking that I could be a scientist, or that it was something that I wanted to do. So, I switched my degree to be in English, because that’s another passion of mine, English Literature. That was an easy switch for me. I did my bachelor’s degree at Cal State Monterey Bay, & I hold the bias that Monterey Bay is one of the most beautiful places on Earth, & one of the best places in the world to do Marine Biology. So when I graduated with my English degree, I thought there was no better place than to give this a try. I had some friends who were science majors, & they said “Yeah, just take some classes, see how you like it.”
Instead of pursuing the next level of an English Degree, whether that be a master’s or teaching certificate, I decided to go back & give marine science a try. So far, it’s worked out!
6. How did you enter the field of marine science, & what was the first research project that you ever worked on?
I will admit that when I went back to get my science degree, at first I was kind of stumbling around in the dark. At first, I said, “Maybe I’ll take a couple of classes, & then apply for a master’s program.”, I had no idea what I was doing. It’s a very low chance that a master’s program in Marine Science was going to admit an English Degree Student without a research background with only one science class. I had lofty goals when I first entered, & I was lucky that CSU Monterey Bay had a lot of field courses, & kind of research-based courses. So, by nature of these classes, I started getting more exposure to what it meant to he a scientist. You don’t just take a chemistry class, you have to do things in chemistry. You can’t just take a class on marine biology, you actually need to do marine biology. Getting experience in the classroom I would say was my first exposure, we would do class projects, group research projects.
I was able to get connected to a program at CSU called the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Center. This was a center at CSU that was geared towards helping undergrads into research opportunities. They had a ton of ways to facilitate, whether it be helping to get funding so that you could work with a lab on campus, & they would help you apply for funding outside. They would also help with finding internships across the country. Through them, I was able to get into the Ronald E. McNair Achievement Program, which is set up for marginalized students to increase their representation in STEM, & get them into research programs.
One of the classes I took was a seafloor mapping class, & we did a group research project for it. From my participation & performance, I then got to do an internship at the Seafloor Mapping Laboratory on campus, & I started to do independent research. From the work that I did there, I got to do my Undergraduate Thesis.
All of it was born out of a field studies course as an undergrad that morphed into a lot of different opportunities with the professors on campus.
7. Which universities did you go to for your Master’s Degree & P.h.D, & what was the research topic for your thesis?
I “skipped”, my master’s, although the work that I did as an undergraduate in the marine degree was kind of the equivalent to the master’s. I got a full publication out of that. Because of that, I felt prepared to go straight to a PhD program. I ended up going to Oregon State University, &, & my work there was centered on invasive Lionfish in the Bahamas. That seems like sort of a drastic switch, but I really wanted to do scientific diving for my thesis, & I wanted to do it in warmer water.
I learned to dive at CSU Monterey Bay as one of the programs there. They had a fantastic scientific diving program as a part of the curriculum for their Marine Biology Degree, so it was a low bar for me to get that skill. With the skills of a Scientific Diver, you become highly marketable, it can be an expensive course, & it is a lot of your that you have to put in to be a competent diver. As I had that skill, I was able to hit the ground running as a PhD student, & then I realized I wanted to dive in warmer water. I wanted to wear a smaller wetsuit, & not be bundled up when I got in.
That led me to choose Oregon State University, as they had a laboratory in the Bahamas which worked on coral reefs & invasive species. My thesis goes over the distribution, & habitat use of invasive Lionfish in the Bahamas.
8. Do you mind elaborating on your work to reduce invasive species, & create conservation strategies tailored around reducing them?
A lot of my post-doctoral work was very focused on this. Towards the end of my PhD, I began thinking about how I could make my work more informative. If I can create maps where you can find Lionfish, it can be useful to more than just me. I wanted to find ways for managers & folks to use this in an applied way, that’s not just science for science's sake.
For my post-doctoral work, I continued working on Lionfish, & I started on a project with Dr. Stephanie Green, who’s at the University of Alberta. She’s been working on managing Lionfish invasions in this region since she was a post-doc. I assisted her in finishing a few different projects. One of the biggest goals was you make the removal of Lionfish more efficient.
(Editor’s Note: In Florida, it is common to do large-scale removal of Lionfish during the summer. This is supported by the government & is a highly important method of controlling their population.)
What we did we collect data on how effective these individuals are at collecting Lionfish. You have to collect Lionfish by hand, using either spears or nets. You can’t fish for them traditionally using line & hook, & you can’t use trawls. It’s basically one Lionfish at a time, & it is rather labour-intensive. The whole purpose of the project was to study how you can reduce the labour, money, or effort you are putting into these removals for optimization. How can you get the biggest bang for your buck? How do you spend the least amount of time & get the most out of it?
Let’s pose a scenario. You & I go out to catch Lionfish. I’ve been doing removals for decades, & you are brand new. How fast does it take me to remove a Lionfish versus you? How fast can I remove 10 Lionfish versus you? If we go out at a certain time of day, is it easier to find them? If we go to certain kinds of reefs where there is a lot of coral, that may change the results compared to if we do it in an area with lots of algae. How fast does environmental composition affect how fast we do this? The goal of the project was to see how we can be the most efficient at doing this. We were able to use all of these metrics that we collected to answer these questions.
We found that if you go out at dawn & dusk, when Lionfish are typically active, as they are crepuscular species, it’s much easier to catch them. Even though catching Lionfish is a rather easy skill to learn, experience does matter. You can learn how to catch a Lionfish, & once you have reached the level where you’re good at it, your ability to remove Lionfish from a reef goes up 4 times. In the time a novice is catching one: an expert is catching 4.
The outcome of this is that if you are a manager, & you only have a limited amount of supplies, you’re going to send your best person out, & you’ll send them on a device at dawn or dusk. They’re going to do just as much work as if you send four people out during the middle of the day who don’t have much experience.
As a result of the work that I was doing in Canada, one of my goals was to see if I could apply these concepts of efficient removal to other species.
My second postdoctoral fellowship was geared toward seeing if I could create similar models of removal effort for the European green crab on the western coast of North America. As I always say, with a heavy heart, my fellowship started in March of 2020. All of the things I had planned to do with that, because I had a governmental partner & I was planning on working with some indigenous groups up there, practically all of my field work, got scrapped. That caused me to switch gears, & the project ended up turning out! We were able to get some cool stuff out of it, things such as “How do you become efficient at removing European Green Crabs?”, “What’s the best type of trap?”, “How long do you leave the traps in the water?”, “Is there a way to reduce bycatch?”, & such.
9. May I ask what your work within Spatial Ecology is, what sparked your interest in Spatial Ecology, & what you do within Spatial Ecology?
I always say that I started my career in marine biology started studying sand! For the research project that I did as an undergraduate, what we did was study various sand bed forms that we saw along the coast, using different types of sonar & mapping devices that we have. You typically think of sand as being very movable & pliable. Through the quality, & massive amount of data we were collecting for this huge coastal project to map the continental shelf of California, we were able to see over the course of decades, that some of these features were remaining static. We were able to tell the difference through the composition of some of the sand, as different types of sand will give you different reactivity. Not all sand is equal.
We were able to see that patches of coarse sand, which had larger grain sizes, were staying static over the course of a decade. So, the project for my undergraduate thesis, with the collaboration of another undergraduate student, we mapped these features along the entire coast of California. We saw where they were found, what types of features were more likely to be present, & how this influences conservation strategies.
We managed to create maps of these features along 1,200 miles of coastline. It was a lot of algorithms, & a bit of colouring in between the lines. It was quite a fun project, because it gave me the opportunity to look at a statewide issue.
10. May I ask what inspired you to become a Scientific Diver, & what you enjoy about Scientific Diving?
The cool thing about CSUMB (California State University, Monterey Bay, is that they have a wide variety of physical education classes for you to take, & one of them was diving! I remember, even though I’m an avid water person, I got recruited to play water polo for CSUMB which is why I decided to go, & I never had an inkling for diving. I like being on the water, I was a beach lifeguard for a long time, but being underwater with a contraption on my back was not something I thought I wanted. I had a friend who said “Let’s just take the dive class together! It’s the cheapest we will ever get to be certified.”, because we’re paying course fees instead of two thousand dollars to do an instructor. I thought “How bad can it be?”, & it blew my mind! It completely changed the way that I look at the ocean environment.
Instead of being someone who swims on top, or is in a boat, I get to be underwater & see fish! I get to see all these things, & it was a natural progression because I took the open water course, & I took the advanced rescue course.
After I was done with those courses, they started offering scientific diving, & I thought “Cool, great! This will be the third course I take. I’m just going to do all the classes that they offer.”, & it was really cool because it started to give me a way to think critically about what I was seeing underwater. As a diver, you see patterns, you see different things, & the scientific diving course taught me what to do with those patterns, how you measure those patterns, how you identify those patterns, how you begin identifying wildlife, & it truly changed how I navigated as a diver. Instead of looking at something & saying that it's cool, I know what it is, & I know what is interacting with it. It was really transformative in how I navigated underwater, & what I thought about while I was underwater.
It’s interesting, as I don’t do many recreational dives anymore, & when I do, all I do is sit around & look at fish, count fish, see what is going on in the community, & see how things are interacting with each other!
11. On your website, you discuss coral reef ecology. May I ask broadly speaking, what work have you done within Coral Reef Ecology?
It started when I was doing my PhD. So I did all of my work in the Bahamas, which is a coral reef ecosystem. Then I took a bit of a hiatus & went to Canada, & there I finished off some Lionfish work. I went on trips to the Gulf of Mexico, Belize, & places like that, all in the landscape of Lionfish management, & I taught some courses on how to conduct field surveys.
Now I’ve switched to oceans, & do much more coral reef work. I’m currently proposing to do work on coral reefs out of Mo’orea, French Polynesia. I’ve been going there for three or four years in a variety of capacities. A lot of the things that I have done are facilitating educational programs where we take students & teach them how to dive & do research, so I’m co-doing research with them. They’re leading it, which is great for me because this is how I got my start with student-led research. For me, that’s amazing to be able to facilitate student-led research & be the mentor.
The work that I’m doing with these students & the work that I’m doing with my laboratory is currently broadly in marine seascape ecology, which encompasses things like how fish communities are using their habitat. We look at different levels of degradation on the reef, whether it's live coral or bleached coral, & how that changes how fish & other organisms are using that habitat.
Oftentimes, sheltered warm waters make fantastic nursery habitats for a lot of fish species. Baby fish are tiny in this area close to shore, while all the large predators are out on the reef. When they grow up, they’ll migrate out. This sort of life-stage habitat change is common in many important fish species such as parrotfishes, grouper, & the like. Myself & some of my graduate students are really interested in seeing where we can find these potential nursery habitats in the near shore areas, & if there are things that we are doing on land that are reducing the ability for these organisms to reproduce, if we are reducing the amount of habitat that they are able to reproduce in, & if we are having terrestrial outputs that are reducing near-shore areas as a habitat for important species.
12. Recently, in the fall of 2024, you began a tenure-track position with California State University, Northridge. May I ask what work you have been doing with them, how many students you have in your laboratory, & what the focus of your research has been? Also, what student-led projects are you assisting in with both your Master’s, & Undergraduate Students? Also, Congratulations!
It is exciting for me, I feel like I’ve come full circle coming back to the Cal State system. For me, that is really meaningful to be able to do, even if it’s not through CSUMB, it’s still within the CSU structure & it is still student-forward. That sentiment resounds through the Cal State system.
As a new professor who’s switching systems as I say, I’m starting to expand the places where I do research. A lot of what I’ve been doing now is building my capacity to do research, I’m writing grants, & I’m continuing some of the work that I’ve been doing at Mo’orea. A lot of what I’m doing now is trying to find funding in some capacity, & start research programs in California that I can build into the curriculum. One of my goals is to make opportunities for students in courses to come out & do research with me without having to go to a remote island location for the entire summer. You don’t necessarily have to have specific skills to participate in my lab.
A lot of what I’m doing is kind of coming back to what I did as an undergraduate, which is looking at how different habitats can help facilitate fish communities in our benthic ecosystems down here in Southern California. We also want to look at biogenous environments, like kelp or sponges, & how they are providing habitat in areas with fewer rocky reefs. A lot of what I am doing is attempting to set up that program, & funding for it.
I like to say that I have two half & two whole graduate students in my laboratory, where I am co-advising two. One of them finished her first field season, which is very exciting for her. She’s the one who’s kind of leading this near-shore juvenile fish nursery kind of project. It’s something she’s very interested in, especially looking at the anthropogenic terrestrial inputs & how those are affecting fish communities. Along with her, we went to a bunch of sites over the summer where she collected tons & tons of data on fish, sediment, & algae. That sets my laboratory up to go back & start getting time-series data on things, which relate to how things are changing through seasons, & how things are changing year-to-year compared to the baseline data collected with my graduate students.
As for the two new students that I have in my laboratory, one of them is interested in large spatial ecological questions, which is lovely for me. She has a very GIS kind of spatial ecology background. She is likely going to see if she can use some large oceanographic models to help us think about fish populations. She is very interested in working where she lives, so she wants to work in California, & think about how she can incorporate citizen-science into monitoring. We’re still ironing out the details on that one.
Questions About Her Work in Diversity in Science:
13. How would you describe your goals when it comes to creating an equitable & inclusive environment in the fields of Marine, Ecological, & Evolutionary Sciences?
I always like to say my one truth that never changed is “Can I do things to make this easier for those coming after me?”, & that’s the basis for how I think about a lot of my inclusion & equity work. In the STEM fields, a lot of nuanced things give you a leg up, & so a lot of the work that I do is creating spaces where students have access to information, mentors, & a community that can support them in their decisions & give them information on how to make good decisions.
I think I spoke earlier when I went back to get my marine science degree I was like “I’ll just take a couple of classes & apply for a master’s program”, & I never would have gotten in. I had no idea that was a terrible plan, so I was lucky enough to get into programs where I got mentors who told me how to apply to graduate school, & all the things I needed to be a good candidate for graduate school.
A lot of what I do is provide spaces for people to meet people, to teach them how to be good candidates. At CSUN, my colleague whom I think you interviewed Dr. Raphael Ritson Williams (We Did!), is creating a marine biology club. It is going to be a centralized place where the undergraduates can come & get information, & they can interact with graduates. They can interact with professors & ask people questions without cold emailing people. We’re giving them that space, we’re lowering the bar for them to get that information.
We are also working on creating a mentorship program for first-time attendees who have never been to an academic conference before. Their mentor can recommend talks to them, & introduce them to colleagues.
At the core of it, it’s creating these spaces & connections with people so that regardless of where you started, you get information that gets you to the next level. It’s creating those equitable chances for everybody, giving everybody the same leg up, & same background information so that they make informed decisions that they get positive outcomes from.
14. You have done incredible work with a variety of organizations, notably BWEEMS. Do you mind elaborating on some of the work you have done with BWEEMS, which for the audience, stands for Black Women in Ecology, Evolutionary, & Marine Sciences?
BWEEKS was born out of necessity, & it was also a COVID project. A lot of us were feeling isolated, alone, & disconnected from the world as well as science in general. It is really a community-based organization. Our main focus is supporting the people in our organization & what they do. As I said, it was born out of COVID desperation, & we started with community meetings. We provided a Zoom platform for people to talk about what’s going on at their institution, what’s going on in their personal lives, & how they are dealing with not being able to go into work & see folks, how they are dealing with the rollback, & when they are going to he able to go back to work. We gave people a safe place to talk about anything with like-minded people.
From there, it’s grown into an incorporated nonprofit organization that has over 700 members worldwide. It has become a place for people to come & for support, advice, job opportunities, & such. We have all these systems in place, & it’s great. You can recommend people for positions, & now they have a job recommendation from somebody that they know & trust. You can also inquire about different schools or institutions. It’s provided this Global Network for our members to be able to get resources on a variety of different things, because we have people in academia, people in nonprofit, & people in government.
We are putting people together in a collaborative space, it can be as trivial as people getting together for coffee, or people working on papers together. That for me is one of the greatest things that’s come out of this organization, the ability to gather as a group. We’ve had 2 conferences so far, & these conferences are just amazing in so many different ways where you get to interact with these people you’ve met online. You get to see all three of our disciplines, ecology, evolution, & marine science. You get to find potential people to collaborate with, you get to recruit grad students, & you get to find somebody to talk to about the job you are applying for.
This type of networking which I believe has been available to people in STEM fields for hundreds of years, but as black women, it’s something new that we’re kind of building for ourselves. I believe that is a very powerful part of it. It’s giving ourselves this community that has existed for other demographics for a long time. There’s a lot of power in being able to know that you have 700 people around the world rooting for you.
15. What has been your biggest triumph or proudest moment across your career?
There are a lot of them. Getting my PhD made me incredibly proud & feel triumphant. Getting my job at CSUN, & all of the connections I have made have also made me proud. The one that I cried for the most was when I was when we had our first conference for BWEEMS. I was one of the people who was on the committee that ran that. I always like to say I did a good job of keeping it together until I introduced our very last invited speaker. I was looking out at the crowd at a bunch of beautiful black women's faces, & I just thought “We did it! This is all I’ve dreamed of.”, That was a huge triumph for me because of the level of satisfaction that I got.
16. I’m sure that you have faced just as many challenges & setbacks as you have leaps forward, what has been the biggest hurdle or challenge that you have faced across your career, & how did you overcome it?
There are so many to choose from. I believe that for me, & from a lot of people in a similar position is understanding is imposter syndrome. Back when I was a graduate student, people used to say “You’re not an impostor!”. I think that for me, one of the things that helped me overcome that, & this might become a meme I’ve seen online recently, is that you are an impostor! The academic system was not built for someone who looks like me. It was built for white, cisgender, heterosexual, men. I am not any one of those things, well I do apply to some of them but the point is the same. Understanding that the system that I am in, that I am thriving in, was completely built to actively exclude me, has been a huge challenge, but I think it has oftentimes been bolstering. Understanding why I didn’t feel like I belonged, understanding why I felt like my existing in a space was not appropriate, & feeling like I was a charity case, all of those things really bog you down. The system was built to make me feel like that. All of these things are going up against me, & I’m still here. I’m still going through it. The hard part about this is that the resilience that it takes to get through it is not something I wish on anyone. People should not be resilient to get a degree in academia, not the way that a lot of people go through this. Coming to terms with that is both really challenging, & knowing that the work that a lot of people have to put in is so much farther & above than some of their counterparts. It makes you stronger, but it also takes a toll. Coming back to some of the DEI work, how do I make it easier for people? How do I reduce that effort, reduce that toll that was taken out of me? How do I get back those years of enthusiasm? Understanding that you are in a system that is built to exclude you is tough, & choosing to go on & work in that field to try & include other people is tough. If I’m hot doing that, what else am I doing with my time?
17. Do you have any advice for new marine scientists, aspiring marine biologists, & young people with a passion?
Don’t give up. Find people who support you. I would not be where I am now were it not for the community that I found & the community that has supported me. I am fortunate enough to have a family that supports me, & has supported me through this whole thing, regardless of whether or not they understand why I do the work. You know, they’d like me to live closer to them, but I live far away. They’re happy that I’m happy. Finding people who support your goals & dreams is just so, important. Also, keeping the relationships that you make with students is very important.
Nobody can do this alone. If you try to do it alone, you’re not going to fail, but you’re going to have a tough time. Reaching out to that professor, talking to that student in your class, some of the most supportive people that I had during my PhD were the people at the gym that I attended. They didn’t have any connection whatsoever to the school, but they were there to support me every week & were stoked to see me when I came to practices. Those types of things are very transformative.
Also, find people who care about you as a person, not just an academic. Both sides are very important.
18. Do you have any final words about your work, marine science, marine ecology, or diversity within science?
I hope something I said resonates with somebody out there, whether it be my personal background, my science background, or something else. I hope that it brought you joy. That is literally the only goal that I have in my kind of working world. Even if it’s not a perfect fit sometimes finding those little things that resonate, & make a connection with somebody, I think they are super important. Hopefully, this brought joy to people on a bunch of different levels.
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