Reniel Cabral

I combine ecological and economic theories and methods, big data analytics, and computation to find solutions to fisheries and conservation problems. I am particularly interested in problems where science and scientific innovations can help overcome bottlenecks in fisheries and conservation towards achieving aquatic food security, a vibrant blue economy, and climate-resilient ecosystems and coastal communities.

My work is highly cited and widely referenced in policy discussions. I have published 51 journal articles, along with several reports and book chapters. My H-index is 32, and my Google Scholar citation count is 4041 (29 August 2025). SciVal indicated that I received 45 citations per publication for 2020-2024, and a Field-Weighted Citation Impact of 3.81, indicating that my papers received 381% more citations than the global average. I scored 97.37 in global prominence percentile for the topic “Marine Reserves and Their Ecological Importance” and 96.35 for “Climate Change Impacts on Marine Fisheries Management”. Using Altmetric, my top 3 papers that were referenced most by policy documents are: (1) Costello et al. PNAS 2016 (Altmetric score: 1038, referenced by 48 policy documents), (2) Sala et al. Nature 2021 (Altmetric score: 2537, referenced by 41 policy documents), and (3) Cabral et al. Nature Ecology and Evolution 2018 (Altmetric score: 521, referenced by 14 policy documents).

During my 3.75 years at JCU, I have demonstrated sustained growth in research, teaching, and service performance, reflecting the maturation of my program at JCU. My publication output is increasing. I continued to publish in top-tier journals (Nature and Science), sustained engagements with governments and development organizations, successfully mentored students to completion, sustained high performance teaching as evidenced by my sustained teaching satisfaction score of 5/5 in Fisheries Science (MB3150/5003) for the last three consecutive years, and demonstrated increased leadership roles at JCU currently being the Fisheries Theme Lead of the Centre for Sustainable Tropical Fisheries and Aquaculture and the Belonging Lead of CSE’s Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging.

My leadership in fisheries, food security, and the blue economy is reflected in my policy-related engagements, including publications in the World Bank which helped informed World Bank’s US$210 million investments in Indonesian fisheries, an FAO publication on seaweed aquaculture potential in South and Southeast Asia, quantifying potential fisheries impacts of offshore wind farms development in California funded by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management, resource speakership invitation by the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, and plenary speakership invitation by the National Academy of Sciences and Technology of the Philippines (NAST), the highest scientific body that informs the Philippine president on science and technology matters, on Philippines’ aquatic food security, which I later published as a Policy Brief, and recently awarded as 2025 NAST Outstanding Scientific Paper.

Career highlights

1. Member of the expert group supporting world leaders on The High Level Panel for A Sustainable Ocean Economy (oceanpanel.org/our-experts/)
2. Provided scientific input to the World Bank’s 210 million USD investment in Indonesia as a principal investigator on a World Bank/Walton Family Foundation project
3. Invited to present my work on combating illegal fishing at the official meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)
4. Invited to be a resource speaker at an APEC meeting on decision support tools for managing Indonesia’s small-pelagic fisheries
5. Invited to present and participate in a roundtable on offshore wind Energy in the Philippines by a global non-profit organization, Ocean Energy Pathway
6. Invited to give a keynote presentation on fisheries and climate change at the World Resources Institute meeting in Washington, D.C., attended by several ministers and government officials
7. Invited to present at the Philippine Congress to report on the fisheries status of the Philippines
8. Invited to be a Plenary Speaker at The National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST), Philippine Annual Scientific Meeting. NAST is a scientific body that advises the Philippine President on matters related to science and technology. I published my talk on the Philippine Aquatic Food Security as a Policy Brief and was awarded 2025 Outstanding Scientific Paper by NAST
9. Managed to attract a total of >US$1 million in research grants in my entire career
10. Several papers attracted media attention (Altmetric score in the top 5% of all research output), including features from Scientific American, National Geographic, and The New York Times
11. Editorial Board membership of leading journals (Marine Ecology Progress Series, Frontiers in Marine Science, and The Philippine Journal of Fisheries)
12. Invited to present my research by various organizations, including Environmental Law Alliance, IPB Bogor, University of South Carolina, UC Irvine, UC Davis, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia University, Ocean Energy Pathway, APEC, etc.

To learn more about the work I do, visit my Lab website (Fisheries Reform Lab): https://www.fisheriesreform.com

and my Google Scholar profile: https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=nnlPZC0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao/

I am particularly interested in problems where science and scientific innovations can help overcome bottlenecks to effectively address fisheries and conservation challenges. I am interested in the following topics and methods:

Solutions to overfishing and biodiversity loss in the ocean

Designing networks of marine protected areas

Impacts of climate change on ocean ecosystem economy (wild fisheries, mariculture, coastal tourism, etc.)

Use of big data and satellite technologies (e.g., vessel tracking) to inform fisheries management

Use of bioeconomic and agent-based modeling to design policies in fisheries

Food and livelihood security of coastal fishing communities

Global food systems

Solving illegal fishing