My first step into sustainable fisheries research began during my 2023 LIA summer in Mozambique, where I worked with Love The Oceans. Their work was inspiring, not only for its scientific contributions, but for how it upskilled local communities to collect fisheries data, monitor coral reefs through scuba diving, and empower one another to engage in conservation. I worked alongside local teams to help establish a marine protected area (MPA), support microbusinesses that upcycled beach plastic into sellable products, deliver ocean safety lessons in schools, and assist with swimming programmes for children.
Their model of community‑driven leadership, data collection, and engagement inspired me to work towards having a similar impact in my home country, Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka’s fisheries sector includes over 49,000 artisanal boats, catching more than 100 species of sharks and rays. Yet understanding what is actually being caught remains a major challenge. Monitoring is limited by scattered landing sites, operations at varied times, and widespread species misidentification.
I began reaching out to Sri Lankan experts and built a collaboration with Blue Resources Trust (BRT), an organisation focusing on improving national research capacity and shark and ray fisheries data. With their support I successfully secured grants that allowed me to tailor the remainder of my degree towards developing an eDNA tool for monitoring artisanal fisheries at landing sites.
As I graduate from the University of Leeds this July, I'm caught reflecting on how I've accomplished and stepped into a world 15 year old me would not have imagined. Growing up in Sri Lanka at the end of a 30-year civil war, I watched Sri Lanka strive to catch up with the rest of the world through projects that overlooked environmental and community impacts. True sustainable development seemed a hopeless endeavour. Yet, the Laidlaw programme gave me the foundation and confidence to move from observing problems to actively working towards solutions.
For context on my project, eDNA is DNA shed by an animal into their surrounding (water, air, soil), which can be collected and analysed without needing to directly observe or capture the animal. This presents a powerful opportunity in fisheries, where monitoring is logistically difficult.
In our project, we collected eDNA from wastewater accumulated in boat hulls and compared it with observed catches. The results were promising as all observed shark and ray species were detected through eDNA, while the technique also identified many additional species not recorded through observation.
These “non-observed detections” is where things get interesting. While some could be contamination, we noticed DNA from commercially valuable yet protected species, such as oceanic whitetip and bigeye thresher sharks, on fishing trips where visual observations were based on trader records and photographs provided by boat skippers, rather than direct observation by the research team. This raises an important question: could eDNA help uncover gaps in reporting?
Rather than replacing traditional monitoring, eDNA has the potential to complement it, flagging discrepancies and clandestine catch, reducing misidentification, and guiding more targeted data collection.
However, scaling this work presents significant challenges. All genetic analysis was conducted in the UK, highlighting the lack of accessible sequencing infrastructure in Sri Lanka. Beyond technical barriers, talking with the fishers and networking at Sharks International 2026 Sri Lanka, highlighted broader systemic issues. Communication between national agencies, fisher communities and researchers are fragmented, overlooking policy integration of scientific tools, socio-economic dependencies within fishing communities, and resourcing for adaptive management and enforcement.
Addressing these challenges requires more than scientific innovation, it demands interdisciplinary collaboration across ecology, policy, economics, and community engagement.
As I move on from the comforts of being a student to an early-career conservationist, I hope to build on this foundation, developing accessible genetic monitoring systems, strengthening local research capacity, better understanding of these complex systems and contributing to more transparent and sustainable fisheries in Sri Lanka.
If your work intersects with conservation technology, fisheries governance, or scalable environmental solutions, I would love to connect. As I transition into becoming a conservationist, I am seeking guidance not only on advancing the science, but on how to sustainably build and support this work long-term. This includes advice on securing funding, supporting local teams, and managing the operational and administrative realities of establishing a research or conservation initiative. I would greatly value any connections, mentorship, or advice that could help turn this work into a sustained and locally grounded effort. Please feel free to reach out or connect with me on LinkedIn