Dani Bartz

Dani Bartz is an NCASC Diverse Knowledge Systems Fellow, working with others within the PI-CASC network to create educational lesson plans for local grade schools focused on understanding climate change and facilitating adaptation through the collection and analysis of local ecological knowledge within the community.

Dani Bartz is also a PhD candidate in the marine biology program at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and a member of the USGS Hawaiʻi Cooperative Fishery Research Unit. Her dissertation work focuses on using local ecological knowledge, catch data, and a novel environmental DNA survey to reconstruct historical population dynamics of sharks in Hilo Bay and to assess the current shark nursery habitat. She worked as research assistant for the Hawaiʻi Community Tagging Program, a community-based effort working with local small-scale fishers to track sharks and mitigate depredation, and was part of the inaugural cohort of Patents2Product Fellows through the UH Office of Innovation and Commercialization for an eDNA filtration system she created. She also worked on a collaborative project between PI-CASC and the Alaska CASC studying the age and growth of fishes as it relates to streamflow conditions in Ridge2Reef and Icefield2Ocean ecosystems. She is a recipient of the American Association of University Women Dissertation Award and is currently a research assistant on a project studying interactions between ʻōpelu (Mackerel scad) and humpback whales in Hawaiʻi.