Vanessa Jaiteh

About Vanessa

Growing up in the Swiss mountains, the ocean was a distant dream for me until I took my first gulp of Mediterranean seawater at age nine. I have since lived in Australia, Indonesia, Palau, and New Caledonia, to study and work on issues related to tropical fisheries and anthropogenic impacts on large marine predators, including fisheries bycatch, aerial and boat-based marine megafauna surveys, shark fisheries and fishing livelihoods.

I realized early on that the natural sciences alone didn’t allow me to get to the bottom of the issues I wanted to pursue with my studies. In my PhD research I combined methods from the natural and social sciences to study the eastern Indonesian shark fishery. This experience of combining different disciplinary approaches landed me on a continuing journey of exploring novel solutions to management and conservation questions in coastal and oceanic fisheries.

After joining CRRF in 2016, I worked on various consultancies throughout the Micronesia/SE Asia region while writing up my PhD and raising my first (human) baby. Through my GEF-SGP funded project on dugongs I was able to return to the joy of doing fieldwork and discover the rewards of public science outreach. Later, working in a government agency as fisheries scientist, I was immersed in the realities of natural resource management in a small Pacific Island nation. Simultaneously, this work exposed me to regional fisheries science and management bodies, which led to my first postdoc.

My current work focuses on bycatch in oceanic fisheries targeting tuna. Funded through the Swiss National Science Foundation, this project aims to establish a baseline of bycatch species caught in Palau’s tuna longline fishery over the past decade. This lays a foundation for future performance assessments of the Palau National Marine Sanctuary (PNMS) – fully implemented on 1st January 2020 – and to estimate the expected protective effect of the PNMS on bycatch species.

Contact details

Publications and downloads

Vanessa’s publications can be found on her ResearchGate profile and on Academia. Please email for copies of papers that cannot be accessed from these links.

Original articles

• Jaiteh V, Loneragan N and Warren C (2017) The end of shark finning? Impacts of declining catches and fin demand on coastal cumminity livelihoods. Marine Policy.
• Jaiteh V, Hordyk A, Braccini M, Warren C and Loneragan N (2016) Shark finning in eastern Indonesia: assessing the sustainability of a data-poor fishery. ICES Journal of Marine Science. doi: 10.1093/icesjms/fsw170
• Jaiteh V, Lindfield S, Mangubhai S, Warren C, Fitzpatrick B and Loneragan N (2016) Higher abundance of Marine Predators and changes in fishers’ behavior following spatial protection within the world’s biggest shark fishery. Frontiers in Marine Science. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2016.00043
• Jaiteh V and Momigliano P (2015) New distribution records of the Vulnerable fossil shark Hemipristis elongata from eastern Indonesia call for improved fisheries management. Marine Biodiversity Records 8: e79
• Momigliano P and Jaiteh V (2015) First records of the grey nurse shark Carcharias taurus (Lamniformes: Odontaspididae) from oceanic reefs in the Timor Sea. Marine Biodiversity Records 8: e56
• Jaiteh V, Allen S, Meeuwig J and Loneragan N (2014) Combining in-trawl video with observer coverage improves understanding of protected and vulnerable species bycatch in trawl fisheries. Marine and Freshwater Research. Online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/MF13130
• Jaiteh V, Allen S, Meeuwig J and Loneragan N (2013) Subsurface behavior of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) interacting with fish trawl nets in northwestern Australia: Implications for bycatch mitigation. Marine Mammal Science 29(3): E266-E281

Book chapter

• Momigliano P, Jaiteh V and Speed C (2015) Predators in danger: Shark conservation and management in Australia, New Zealand, and their neighbours. In: Adam Stow, Gregory Holwell, Norman Maclean (eds). Austral Ark. Cambridge University Press.

Reports

• Whitcraft S, Hofford A, Hilton P, O’Malley M, Jaiteh V and P. Knights. (2014) Evidence of Declines in Shark Fin Demand, China. WildAid. San Francisco, CA.

Conference Presentations

• Jaiteh V, Lindfield S, Mangubhai S, Warren C, Fitzpatrick B and Loneragan N (2016) More sharks, less fins: Ecological successes and socio-economic challenges of spatial protection within the world’s biggest shark fishery. International Coral Reef Symposium, Honolulu, Hawai’I, July 2016
• Jaiteh V, Hordyk A, Braccini M, Warren C and Loneragan N (2015) What’s the catch? Recent trends in the Eastern Indonesian shark fishery. Australian Society for Fish Biology Conference, Sydney, Australia, 12-16 October 2015
• Jaiteh V, Warren C and Loneragan N (2014) Sharks, Sails and Smugglers: Fishing for new livelihoods in Eastern Indonesia. 2^nd World Small-Scale Fisheries Congress, Merida, Mexico, 21-26 September 2014
• Jaiteh V, Warren C and Loneragan N (2014) Building an understanding of the world’s biggest shark fishery through fishers’ knowledge and participation in scientific data collection. Sharks International, Durban, South Africa, 2-6 June 2014
• Jaiteh V, Warren C and Loneragan N (2012) Predators as livelihoods: Shark fisheries in Eastern Indonesia. Australian Society for Fish Biology & Oceania Chondrichthyan Society, Adelaide, Australia, 15 – 18 June 2012
• Jaiteh V, Allen S, Meeuwig J, Loneragan N (2011) Sub-surface behaviour of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) interacting with fish trawl nets in NW Australia. Australian Marine Sciences Association Conference, Fremantle, Western Australia.
• Jaiteh V, Allen S, Meeuwig J, Loneragan N (2010) Interactions between dolphins and an Australian demersal scalefish trawl fishery: implications for bycatch mitigation. European Cetacean Society (ECS) Conference, Stralsund, Germany.