Director of BRI’s Net Positive Initiative; Senior Quantitative Ecologist
Email: holly.goyert@briwildlife.org

As a quantitative marine ecologist, Holly has dedicated the last couple decades of her career to quantifying interactions between marine communities of birds, mammals, fish, and invertebrates, from the seafloor to above the sea surface. She spent years collecting data both at sea aboard ships, and onshore within seabird colonies. She uses hierarchical statistical models to estimate the exposure of marine biological communities to offshore energy development. At the intersection of her public and private sector technical experience, she leads the Atlantic Marine Bird Cooperative working group for Marine Spatial Planning. Holly speaks fluent Spanish and has both lived and worked in various locales throughout North and South America.

• Ph.D. in Biology – CUNY GC, CSI, Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, and Behavior (EEB) program, 2013
• B.S., Biopsychology and Environmental Studies- Tufts University, 2003

• Conservation
• Behavioral Ecology
• Community Ecology
• Marine Biology
• Population Biology
• Spatial Ecology

2024 KA Williams, … HF Goyert et al. A Framework for Studying the Effects of Offshore Wind Energy Development on Birds and Bats in the Eastern United States. Frontiers in Marine Science

2023 C Goetsch, J Gulka, K Friedland, AJ Winship, J Clerc, A Gilbert, HF Goyert et al. Surface and subsurface oceanographic features drive forage fish distributions and aggregations. Ecol & Evol

2020 PH Loring, JD McLaren, HF Goyert, PWC Paton. Supportive wind conditions influence offshore movements of Atlantic coast piping plovers (Charadrius melodus melodus). The Condor

2020 MD Staudinger, H Goyert, JJ Suca, et al. The role of sand lances (Ammodytes sp.) in the Northwest Atlantic Ecosystem. Fish and Fisheries

2018 HF Goyert, EO Garton, AJ Poe. Effects of climate change and environmental variability on the carrying capacity of Alaskan seabird populations. The Auk

2018 HF Goyert, B Gardner, RR Veit, AT Gilbert, EE Connelly, et al. Evaluating habitat, prey, and mesopredator associations in a community of marine birds. ICES Journal of Marine Science

2017 HF Goyert, EO Garton, BA Drummond, HM Renner. Density-dependence and changes in the carrying capacity of Alaskan seabird populations. Biological Conservation

2016 HF Goyert, B Gardner, R Sollmann, et al. Predicting the offshore distribution and abundance of marine birds with a hierarchical community distance sampling model. Ecological Applications

2015 HF Goyert. Foraging specificity and prey utilization: evaluating social and memory-based strategies in seabirds. Behaviour

2014 HF Goyert, LL Manne, & RR Veit. Facilitative interactions among the pelagic community of temperate migratory terns, tunas and dolphins. Oikos

2014 HF Goyert. Relationship among prey availability, habitat and the foraging behavior, distribution, and abundance of common terns Sterna hirundo and roseate terns S. dougallii. Mar Ecol Prog Ser

2022 M Poti, HF Goyert et al. Data synthesis and predictive modeling of deep-sea coral and hardbottom habitats offshore of the southeastern US: guiding efficient discovery and protection of sensitive benthic areas. BOEM 224

2021 HF Goyert et al. Characterizing Spatial Distributions of Deep-Sea Corals and Chemosynthetic Communities in the US Gulf of Mexico through Data Synthesis and Predictive Modeling. Final Report, BOEM. 317 p.

2019 Tracking Offshore Occurrence of Common Terns, Endangered Roseate Terns, and Threatened Piping Plovers with VHF Arrays. Final Report to BOEM under USFWS Agreement. 140 p.

2018 Tracking Movements of Threatened Migratory rufa Red Knots in U.S. Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf Waters. Final Report to BOEM under USFWS Agreement. 145 p.

2015 Ch. 1-2, 9, 12, 13: Baseline Wildlife Studies in Atlantic Waters Offshore of Maryland. Final Report to the MD Department of Natural Resources and the MD Energy Administration. 437 p.

2015 Ch. 1-2, 12, 15, 18: Wildlife Densities and Habitat Use Across Temporal and Spatial Scales on the Mid-Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf. Final Report, DOE EERE Wind Technologies. 715 p.

2015 Pelagic Seabirds off the East Coast of the United States 2008-2013: Final Report to BOEM. 186 p