Her early career (1975-1992) was as a fisheries biologist in the Population Dynamics Branch at NOAA’s Woods Hole Laboratory; there she conducted stock assessments to provide management advice on commercially important species; she also developed the first in NOAA’s ongoing annual series: “The Status of the Marine Fishery Resources of the Northeastern United States” (McBride and Brown 1980).
She was invited to work (1990-1991) as a visiting scientist at the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen, Norway where she applied a method — that she had developed to estimate discard — to data from Norway’s cod fishery in the Barents Sea. As result of that effort, “Estimation of Unreported Catch in a Commercial Trawl Fishery” was published in the Journal of Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Science (McBride and Fotland 1996). Also in the U.S., she worked three years (1993-1996) at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the successful restoration effort for Atlantic coastal striped bass.
She next devoted three years (1996-1999) foreign service at the Fisheries Research Institute (IIP) in Maputo, Mozambique: At IIP, she provided advice to administrator on purchases to strengthen the science library, and worked with individual Mozambican scientists to document and publish (in English) results of their research; this ensured recognition of IIPs scientific efforts as well as ongoing international support. This institution-building program, designed to help Mozambique research and manage its fisheries, was sponsored by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD).
Upon return to the U.S., she joined NOAA’s Chesapeake Bay Office where, working with a panel of regional scientists, she led development of “Fisheries Ecosystem Planning for Chesapeake Bay”; this first-of-its-kind document was published as a book by the American Fisheries Society (Chesapeake Bay Fisheries Ecosystem Advisory Panel 2006).
Again invited to work at IMR in 2007, she currently works on issues related to ecosystem-based research and management through an Intergovernmental Personnel Action (IPA) between IMR and NOAA Fisheries. At IMR, she is member of the Distribution and Trophic Interactions research group, has served as scientific editorial coordinator of the Marine Biology Research journal. She contributes to IMR’s Oil and Fish Program, its Pollution Risk and Impact Analysis for the Barents Sea Ecosystem (PRIBASE) project, and to other related projects.
Ms. McBride believes that the human footprint on our planet should be minimized, and that an ecosystem-based approach is a key to sustainable management of natural resources to ensure ongoing ecosystem services. As coordinator of the ESSAS project at IMR, she hopes to facilitate collaborative research efforts that will help find effective solutions to environmental issues, problems, and concerns shared between nations.
