Program

Dr. Fahmi is a Senior Researcher at the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) in Indonesia. He has extensive experience working on sharks and rays on a variety of topics including fisheries management, life history, taxonomy, biology, and ecology. He completed his PhD in 2021 at the University of Queensland studying Brownbanded Bamboo Sharks. Fahmi has been a member of the IUCN Shark Specialist Group since 2007 and is the current Regional Vice Chair of the Asia IUCN SSG. Fahmi has authored over 60 peer-reviewed publications, over 80 IUCN Red List Assessments, and been involved in many technical reports regarding the status of sharks and rays in Indonesia and Southeast Asia

Cassie has extensive experience in shark fisheries, research, conservation and management (>25 years) with a focus in recent years on CITES, IUCN Red List assessments, and global and Pacific shark conservation. Cassie is currently the IUCN SSC Shark Specialist Group SSG Red List Authority Coordinator, co-ordinating and drafting global Red List assessments. Since her PhD, on deepwater chondrichthyans life history, Cassie has been actively engaged in shark conservation issues, contributing to ecological risk assessments of South Pacific and South Indian Ocean deepwater sharks to high seas fishing, compiling risk summaries of all Australian sharks and rays, developing WWF tools to improve shark management (the Rapid Assessment Toolkit and the Shark and Ray MPA Guide), and producing a Preliminary Recovery Plan for Scalloped Hammerheads in the Indian Ocean. Cassie has trained Pacific countries and Indonesia to undertake Non-Detriment Findings (NDF) of CITES listed sharks and rays, and has prepared NDFs for Australian recently listed CITES species which were listed at the 2022 CITES Conference of the Parties, where Cassie was the SSG CITES representative providing scientific advice on carcharhinid, guitarfishes and hammerhead listing proposals to governments, NGOs and Parties.

Fisheries Advisor – Oceanic Fisheries Program, Pacific Community

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​Dr Leontine Baje is currently a fisheries advisor with the Pacific Community. In this role she supports member countries and territories to discuss, plan and implement the transition of paper-based reporting to electronic reporting and monitoring. Leontine’s journey to shark research began with the ACIAR and National Fisheries Authority’s project to investigate sharks and rays encountered in Papua New Guinea fisheries. Her PhD study focused on the biology, ecology and ecological risk assessment of sharks and rays caught as bycatch in the Gulf of Papua prawn trawl fishery. She was a member of the fish and fisheries research lab at James Cook University from 2015 to 2019 and supervised by Professor Colin Simpfendorfer and Drs Andrew Chin and William White.