Dr Nick Caputi has a Bachelor of Science (Hons) in statistics and a PhD from Murdoch University with the thesis ’Aspects of stock-recruitment relationships for crustaceans‘.
He began work as a statistician in 1974 with Fisheries in Western Australia, working on fisheries projects from all major commercial and recreational fisheries in WA.
Dr Caputi is currently the Supervising Scientist of the Invertebrates branch, which undertakes research on rock lobster, pearl oyster, prawns, scallop, blue swimmer crabs, deep sea crabs and abalone.
His research focus is invertebrate fisheries stock assessment. He has published over 50 papers and book chapters. His research experience includes catch predictions based on pre-recruit abundance, environmental effects on recruitment, spawning stock-recruitment relationships, climate change effects on fisheries, and the maximum economic yield of the western rock lobster fishery.
He has participated in reviews of a number of fisheries in the USA for the Center of Independent Experts. These include the Atlantic northern shrimp fishery and Atlantic scallop fishery in Woods Hole, the Alaskan crab fisheries in Seattle and the blue crab fishery of Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. He also participated in the annual stock assessment of the prawn fishery in Mozambique for seven years (1998-2004).
In 1988 Dr Caputi won a Churchill Fellowship for a 10-week overseas trip to study fisheries stock assessment methods, with particular attention to lobster recruitment studies. This enabled him to visit marine research laboratories in Nanaimo (British Columbia), Marathon (Florida), University of Miami, Havana (Cuba), Woods Hole (Massachusetts), and Lowestoft (England).
He was a member of the Executive Council of the Australian Society of Fish Biology from 1993 to1998 and has been joint editor of the Lobster Newsletter since 2012.
Dr Nick Caputi PhD
Supervising Scientist, Invertebrates
T: (08) 9203 0165
E:
Nick.Caputi@fish.wa.gov.au