Simon Gulak received his Bachelor’s Degree in Oceanography with Marine Biology from the University of Southampton, England, in 2001. He went on to work as a fishery observer for the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) Panama City Laboratory and Southeast Fisheries Science Centre (SEFSC) Miami Laboratory for five years.
In 2007, Simon joined the NMFS Panama City Laboratory fishery observer office as an assistant coordinator and started a part-time MSc of Zoology at the University of Aberdeen, in Scotland. He completed the MSc in 2012 with the thesis entitled “Phylogenetics and phylogeography of the bull shark, Carcharhinus leucas (Valenciennes, 1839)”. In the interim, he was promoted from assistant observer coordinator to lead fishery observer coordinator for two observer programs at SEFSC.
Simon has co-authored ten peer-reviewed publications and is the lead author on two studies regarding the hooking mortality in coastal shark species. As an observer coordinator, Simon has trained observers in Liberia, Gabon, Oregon, Florida, and Texas. He has been involved in several shark stock assessments, providing data series documents and also managed satellite tagging data of elasmobranchs for the SEFSC.
In 2015, Simon formed the consultancy company, Sea Leucas LLC, to provide capacity building and other services to NGOs in Central America and elsewhere. Sea Leucas has completed contracts for Birdlife International, Roatan Marine Park, and MarAlliance. Simon hopes to continue to provide scientific and logistical advice to Ilili as the organization grows.