Pacific, Climate & Environment Profile Series: Sabrina Virly
- 27 minutes ago
- 2 min read
As part of AFRAN’s 10th anniversary celebrations, we are continuing to highlight the diverse people, expertise and collaborations that have shaped our network over the past decade.
Today, we are pleased to feature Sabrina Virly, a scientist and fisheries engineer who has been based in New Caledonia for more than 30 years. Her career reflects a gradual journey from fisheries and aquaculture research towards a broader understanding of marine ecosystems and the communities that depend on them.
From coastal and lagoon fisheries to coral reefs and mangroves, Sabrina’s work has focused on understanding marine resources within the wider ecosystems in which they exist. Her work on mangroves, in particular, has led to long-standing collaborations with Australian researchers such as Norman Duke | LinkedIn, and contributed to the first reliable mapping of New Caledonia’s mangrove ecosystems.
If you want to know more about the work that has been done on mangroves in New Caledonia, you can click on the following link to discover a compilation of knowledge on the topic, highlighted in the book that Sabrina wrote together with Norman Duke and Dieter Tracey: (PDF) New Caledonian mangroves. A treasure to protect
Her career has also taken her beyond New Caledonia, through collaborations and projects across the Pacific, including work with SPREP on mangrove restoration and community capacity building.
For Sabrina, the environmental challenges facing the Pacific cannot be addressed through isolated approaches. Her work highlights the importance of combining scientific expertise, local knowledge and collaboration to better understand ecosystems and support sustainable management.
She also emphasises the importance of making scientific knowledge accessible: understanding the challenges is essential for enabling communities and individuals to feel concerned, take ownership and act.
Sabrina’s experience also illustrates the value of the connections AFRAN seeks to foster. Through its network, she has developed collaborations between France, Australia and the Pacific, bringing together complementary expertise and creating opportunities to work collectively in the field.
Discover her story below as we continue celebrating 10 years of connections, collaboration and shared knowledge through AFRAN.
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