Organising Committee

Hein Sas

Hein Sas is member of the NORA Advisory Board and is as such a link between the Dutch native oyster restoration network and NORA. He is highly motivated to help organising NORA3, since he strongly believes that exchange of knowledge and experiences on a European level will help to speed up native oyster restoration projects.

Philine zu Ermgassen

Philine zu Ermgassen has ten years experience in oyster restoration science and marine coastal habitat restoration. She has developed numerous ecosystem service models for oyster and other coastal habitats in the US and globally, and authored both scientific papers and outreach user manuals to help to translate the science into policy and practice. She is delighted to be supporting the continued process of learning about and sharing experiences of oyster restoration. Philine is a member of the NORA Secretariat.

Katrin Wollny-Goerke

Katrin Wollny-Goerke is an independent freelancer, based in Hamburg with her small enterprise meeresmedien www.meeresmedien.de. Katrin has been working in support of NORA since its founding, and has assisted with the organization of both the first NORA meeting in Berlin 2017, and NORA 2 in Edinburgh. Katrin is a member of the NORA Secretariat.

Boze Hancock

Boze Hancock is the Senior Marine Habitat Restoration Scientist for TNC’s Global Oceans Team and a member of the NORA Secretariat. Boze assists in developing marine habitat restoration in new geographies and provides technical support for partners and numerous restoration projects throughout TNC’s global portfolio. He also works to provide the science support for marine habitat restoration, particularly through quantifying the ecosystem services these habitats provide human communities. Boze is a member of the NORA Secretariat.

Karel van den Wijngaard

Karel is managing the shellfish reef restoration projects at ARK Nature (NL) (www.ark.eu), working closely together with, first of all, WWF-NL and with other parties and organisations, in the Netherlands and abroad. As such, he has been involved with the first field projects in the Netherlands since the beginning (2016), in Dutch marine and estuarine waters. He has been connected with NORA since the first gathering in Berlin in 2017. He is currently setting up the Dutch restoration network, since he believes in cooperation between all parties involved to further the cause. Hence, he also gladly assists in organising NORA3. Karel has a background in environmental sciences.

Scientific Committee

Berenger Colsoul

Bérenger Colsoulis a researcher at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany where he currently works on the ecological restoration of the European flat oyster in the German Bight. His research is focused on the sustainable, ecological and substantial supply of O. edulis seeds and substrate. Bérenger comes from a family of French oyster farmers producing Pacific oysters and European flat oysters overall French Atlantic and North Sea coast, and he seeks to apply this knowledge of collection/production techniques in the restoration context.

Alison Debney

Alison is the Senior Conservation Programme Manager for UK and Europe at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL). Alison has 25 years’ experience in delivering marine and freshwater conservation projects around the world focussing on the sustainable management of natural resources with beneficial outcomes for both wildlife and people. Alison is the Chair of the Essex Native Oyster Restoration Initiative (ENORI), Co-Chair of the Native Oyster Network for UK & Ireland and a member of the NORA steering committee. Alison has recently been elected to the board of the European Wetland Association.

David Donnan

David Donnan works in the Sustainable Coasts and Seas Team in NatureScot (formerly Scottish Natural Heritage), the Government’s nature adviser in Scotland. He works on biodiversity/marine fisheries interactions, on non-native species and has had an involvement in native oyster conservation in Scotland for over 20 years. For native oyster, NatureScot has the twin aims of protecting existing populations and restoring the historic range in Scotland. We see meeting the challenges of sustainable and ecologically sound oyster restoration as a significant goal in the next few years.

Dr Luke Helmer

As Restoration Science Officer for the Blue Marine Foundation, Luke influences the direction of the research required to maximise the success of operations conducted for the Solent Oyster Restoration Project, integrated restoration and offshore windfarms. Having recently completed his PhD studies on the efficacy of suspended broodstock cages as larval pumps, Luke has gained a range of skills and expertise across the field of oyster restoration. Areas of interest and study include ecology, invasive species, aquaculture, disease, reproduction, environmental influences and scientific communications.

Dr Pauline Kamermans

Dr Pauline Kamermans is working at Wageningen Marine Research in the Netherlands since the year 2000 and since 2018 also part-time at the Marine Animal Ecology Group of Wageningen University. She received her BSc degree from the University of Amsterdam and her MSc and PhD from the University of Groningen. Research for her PhD was carried out at the Netherlands Institute for Sea Research on Texel. She worked as a postdoc at the North Carolina State University and the Netherlands Institute of Ecology. Kamermans has 32 years’ experience in marine ecological and aquaculture research of which 25 years have been devoted to shellfish. Her present work focusses on shellfish aquaculture and shellfish restoration including flat oyster restoration in the North Sea.

Dr Joanne Preston

Dr Joanne Preston is a Marine Biologist based at the Institute of Marine Sciences, University of Portsmouth. She founded the UK/Ireland Native Oyster Network in collaboration with the Zoological Society of London to catalyse a national approach and scale of oyster habitat restoration and facilitate best practice in management and monitoring of flat oyster restoration projects. Dr Preston provides scientific leadership for the Solent Oyster Restoration Project in collaboration with Blue Marine Foundation to enable research driven practice and support adaptive management.

Dr William Sanderson

Bill is a MASTS Reader/Associate Professor of Marine Biodiversity at Heriot-Watt University. His research concentrates on restorative management and sustainable development with a focus on shellfish and other habitats of high biodiversity conservation importance, Marine Protected Areas and Ecosystem Services. Bill is the Research Director of the Dornoch Environmental Enhancement Project and was one of the hosts of NORA 2.

Prof. Dr Henning von Nordheim

Henning is a marine benthic ecologist and has been stimulating interest and supporting research for the restoration of Native oyster reefs in Europe and particularly in Germany for more than a decade, through supplying ideas and through funding by his Agency. From 1992-2020, Henning was the head of the Marine Nature Conservation at the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation on the Isle of Vilm. Henning, with his staff, was responsible for German positions and activities in national and international bodies and conventions for almost all aspects of marine conservation in global oceans, in the Baltic Sea, North Sea and Polar regions, including administration of the MPA network in the German EEZ. For 10 years he was the chair of the HELCOM biodiversity working group and for 4 years, chair of the OSPAR working group on Marine Protected Areas, species and Habitats (MASH). Since 1998 he has been chair of the OSPAR-MPA programme and member of the EU Marine Expert Group. Henning is Honorary Professor for “Marine Nature Conservation” at the University of Rostock, Germany and he continues to be actively involved in a number of marine projects.