Sarah Borsetti joins the Marine Advisory Program as a Commercial Fisheries Specialist. In her new role, she plans to fill gaps between academic research and the needs of the Virginia’s commercial fishing industry.
Previously, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Rutgers University, where she studied potential effects of offshore wind farms on various shellfish fisheries. She contributed to a recent modeling study that examined the economic impacts if the fishing industry is excluded from fishing or traveling within wind energy areas.
“There are a lot of wind farms proposed along the East Coast, and because of their placement, several fisheries are concerned due to the overlap with some really important fishing grounds or transit areas,” Borsetti said.
Borsetti, who hails from New Jersey, earned a Ph.D. from the Rutgers University, where she studied an offshore whelk and whether it could be a viable fishery in the United States, like it has been in the United Kingdom. She also worked as a laboratory technician in the Rutgers Haskin Shellfish Lab, where she worked with a variety of research projects and helped respond to industry questions.
“We were in the heart of where the New Jersey oyster industry is,” Borsetti said. “We could go next door and talk to the fishermen, and if they had questions, they could come to us. It was nice to be integrated into the fishing community.”