A research collaboration between Coastal Conservation and Education Foundation (CCEF) and the Florida Institute of Technology (FIT) was made official last January 8 with a Memorandum of Agreement signed by the two parties represented by (see photo from left to right) CCEF’s Executive Director, Atty. Liza-Eisma Osorio; CCEF’s Research Director, Dr. Aileen Maypa; FIT student Robert Fidler (Master of Science in Marine Biology) and his adviser, Dr. Ralph Turingan (Professor and Chairperson of FIT’s Marine Biology Program).

As part of FIT’s series of ecological-physiological-evolutionary investigations, Mr. Fidler will be conducting a study on the efficacy of MPAs as a tool for biodiversity conservation and resource sustainability by further determining the underlying organismal or populational mechanisms. Dr. Maypa will be partially supervising Mr. Fidler through the course of his research that will implemented in Moalboal and Badian, Cebu, as well as data-gathering from other CCEF-partnered sites within central Philippines.