Samara Nehemiah

Samara Nehemiah is a Ph.D. student at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory (CBL) at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in Solomons, MD. She works with Dr. Michael Wilberg studying quantitative fisheries in the Marine Estuarine and Environmental Science Program. For her Ph.D. research, Samara is developing new statistical methods to estimate spatially explicit population estimates of striped bass in the Chesapeake Bay. This research will be applied to develop population estimates of numerous ecologically and economically important fishes in the Chesapeake Bay and will improve our understanding of local population dynamics of these species. Samara earned her M.S. in Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences from the University of Florida in 2020 where she studied factors influencing recruitment of spotted seatrout in Cedar Key, Florida. She earned her B.S. in Environmental Science and Policy from the University of Maryland College Park in 2015. Samara's research interests include fish population dynamics, fisheries management, quantitative fisheries, and stock assessment. Samara is an active member of the CBL chapter of the American Association of University Women and the University of Maryland student subunit of the American Fisheries Society. In her free time, Samara enjoys fishing, hiking, and paddle boarding.