Biography

Divya is post doctoral fellow with the Freshwater Fisheries Society of BC. She is working with Adrian Clarke, Eric Parkinson, Theresa Godin, and Dr Murdoch McAllister on developing improved decision analysis modelling methods to help improve understanding and management of mixed-species recreational fisheries in B.C. lakes.

She came to Vancouver, Canada in September, 2005 for her doctoral program with Professor Tony Pitcher. Divya successfully defended her PhD from UBC Fisheries Centre in 2010 with a thesis on “Marine ecosystem restoration with a focus on coral reef ecosystems”. Her thesis contributed to the understanding of ecosystem carrying capacity, marine protected area design, and strategies for re-building fish populations. She re-emphasized the influence of social, economic, and political factors on the health of marine ecosystems and developed a framework to incorporate ecological effects with the values of multiple stakeholders. She used ecosystem models based in Ecopath with Ecosim approach and Bayesian Belief Network models in her thesis.

Before that, she completed her Master's degree at the Central Institute of Fisheries Education, Mumbai, India with Dr R.S. Biradar and Dr S.K. Chakraborty. Her master’s work was on the efficiency of time series models for predicting fish catches along Kerala coast. Divya graduated from College of Fisheries, Panangad, Kerala Agricultural University, India with a degree of Bachelor of Fisheries Science (B.F.Sc) in 2002. She was inspired to work on fisheries management during the fisheries biology classes taught by Dr Rajashekharan Nair and Dr Anna Mercy.