Meet Prof. Judith Gobin – President of the International Association of Biological Oceanography

Earlier this month, at the 6th World Conference on Marine Biodiversity, Professor Judith Gobin was elected as President of the International Association for Biological Oceanography, taking over from Enrique Montes, who served from 2019-2023. We caught up with Judith to get to know more about her, her aims for IABO during her tenure as President, and her hopes for the IABO Hub – the official publishing home of the Association.

“I am very excited to be part of the IABO Hub and the partnership with PeerJ as we continue to ensure that our online platform features the latest research from our community. As a small-island scientist, I am especially looking forward to recruiting other small-island scientists to join the IABO Hub Community.”

“My personal message to anyone thinking about joining IABO and the Hub Community is please do! We need all of your voices to accelerate our work in order to attempt to save the oceans.” – Judith Gobin, President, International Association for Biological Oceanography

I’m Judith Gobin and I have the honour of being recently elected as the new President of the International Association for Biological Oceanography or IABO.

I am a Professor of marine biology with more than 40 years of research experience in Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean. At the moment I am also the Head of the Department of Life Sciences in the Faculty of Science and Technology at The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine campus here in Trinidad and Tobago.

What is your field of research?

My research to date has focused on marine biodiversity of macrobenthic communities in soft sediments, rocky shores and more recently the deep sea. These studies continue to be critical towards greater understanding and informed conservation and management of our marine resources.

What are you excited about as the President of IABO?

As the new President I am extremely pleased to be bringing to IABO a voice, or voices, from small island developing states (SIDS territories). I hope to continue the good work of the previous IABO teams. It will take a lot of work to fill the shoes of Presidents like Enrique Montes, Patricia Miloslavich and Mark Costello and their teams. IABO will continue to disseminate professional and research opportunities and information about scientific events through our portals. At the same time, we stand committed to our core objective of promoting the advancement of knowledge of the biology of the sea by providing opportunities for communication between and amongst marine biologists globally.

As a marine biologist myself, I am hopeful that the IABO membership will continue to focus on improving and restoring good ocean health for the benefit of mankind as we continue to work towards beating marine pollution, protecting and restoring ecosystems and biodiversity, and developing a sustainable and equitable ocean economy, amongst many others. We must continue to inspire and engage our societies towards understanding the total resource values associated with our oceans.

In this respect, the IABO community will continue to connect and collaborate with other related existing networks. This is critical to sustaining ourselves, and at the same time this is the pathway that is a more collaborative way towards solving these problems and providing workable solutions.

What are your thoughts on the IABO Hub?

I am very excited to be now part of the IABO Hub ( https://peerj.com/hubs/iabo ) and the partnership with PeerJ as it continues to ensure that our online platform features the latest research from our community. As a small island scientist I am especially looking forward to recruiting many small island scientists to join the IABO community, many of these young scientists have for too long been out in the cold – that is, not being able to publish their good work in a reputable scientific journal. I hope that we can change this.

My personal message to anyone thinking about joining IABO and the Hub community is, please do! We need all of your voices to accelerate our work in order to attempt to save the oceans.