User:Pbsouthwood/Kerry Sink

Kerry Sink is a South African marine biologist who is the Marine Programme manager and a Principal Scientist at the South African National Biodiversity Institute based at the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens in Cape Town. She received the 2016 Pew Marine Conservation Fellowship, and the World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Award in 2017.

Early life and education
Sink is originally from Durban, and has a PhD in Marine Science from the University of Cape Town (UCT).

Kerry’s husband Dave Smith runs a dive charter boat in Cape Town, and is NSRI rescue crew at Station 26 Kommetjie. She has a son, Jesser. Sink is certified as a Trimix diver through the World Underwater Federation (CMAS), (and class 4 commercial diver?, supervisor?)

Career
Sink is a Marine Program Manager and Principal Scientist at the South African National Biodiversity Institute, where she has been employed since September 2006, originally in Pretoria, more recently in Cape Town. Her work includes mapping South Africa’s marine ecosystem types.
 * 2002 – founded WWF Southern African Sustainable Seafood Initiative (SASSI) providing scientific credibility of the seafood assessments and continues to contribute from the independent SASSI review panel.
 * Coordinated African Coelacanth Ecosystem Programme (ACEP) for the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (SAIAB).
 * 2006 – Joined SANBI Marine Programme.
 * 2010 – Led Offshore Marine Protected Area (OMPA) project, to identify key areas for offshore protection. Operation Phakisa project set targets of increasing South Africa’s MPAs from 0.5% to 5% of EEZ.
 * 2011 – Coordinated and producd Marine and Coastal Component Report of the 2011 National Biodiversity Assessment and ensuring that the Biodiversity and Mining Guidelines included a marine component.
 * 2014 – Set up the SeaKeys project – a collaboration to collate and increase marine biodiversity information useful to support decision making for South African society.
 * 2015 – Society for Conservation Biology’s Distinguished Service Award for mainstreaming marine biodiversity conservation research into South Africa's development planning, policy, management and industrial arenas.
 * 2016 – Received a Pew Marine Fellowship award.

SANBI Projects
The SANBI Marine Programme is a team of scientists working in marine science and policy within SANBI’s mandate defined by the Biodiversity Act. The scientists monitor and report on the state of biodiversity in South Africa’s marine territory, co-ordinate research, provide knowledge and information and advise on policy.
 * The Reef Atlas Project developing the first national map of reef ecosystems for the National Biodiversity Assessment using input from citizen science contributors.
 * Much of the work on Marine Protected Areas has been in terms of Operation Phakisa, a presidential initiative which committed South Africa to proclaiming 5 percent of its Exclusive Economic Zone waters as Marine Protected Areas by 2017. Twenty-one potential MPAs were proposed by Sink's group, of which twenty were proclaimed in December 2019. The South African government has committed to identify an additional 5 percent of of the EEZ for protection by 2019. Part of Sink's contribution was planning to ensure that proposed MPAs optimise biological diversity, while minimising conflict with fishing and mining.
 * The SeaKeys project, which collects marine observations from professional and citizen scientists on crowdsourced and university platforms, including iSpot and later iNauturalist.
 * ACEP Deep Secrets Project which includes Co-Investigators from across 13 institutes mapped the “Kingklip Ridge” in Port Elizabeth Corals Marine Protected Area, collected samples of deep water corals for taxonomic research and is investigating its role as habitat and breeding ground for fishes such as kingklip and jacopever.
 * The new ACEP Deep Forests project near East London.
 * Independent research to define, map, publicise critical areas of marine biodiversity targeting for new MPAs

Publications
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kerry_Sink


 * Note: This is the executive summary
 * Note: This is the full document, with numbered pages.
 * Note: This is the executive summary
 * Note: This is the full document, with numbered pages.
 * Note: This is the executive summary
 * Note: This is the full document, with numbered pages.
 * Note: This is the full document, with numbered pages.