Having lived on the Chilean coast for many years, Adams Ceballos-Concha has spent his entire life closely linked to the ocean, which would become the driving passion behind his research in the UF/IFAS Food and Resource Economics (FRE) Ph.D. program.   

“When I came here, I came with the idea ready in my head,” Ceballos-Concha said. “And that comes from my background because back in Chile. I worked in the Interdisciplinary Center for Agricultural Research, and, before that, my master’s degree is in natural resources and environmental economics, so I have always been around economics, natural resources, and aquaculture.” 

Ceballos-Concha, who graduated from the FRE Ph.D. program in December 2024, was recently recognized by the International Association of Aquaculture Economics and Management (IAAEM) at its annual meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, with the Best Ph.D. Dissertation Award. 

He was advised by Dr. Andrew Ropicki, assistant professor of food and resource economics, and his dissertation work featured three papers: two on salmon aquaculture and a third on stone crab fisheries in Florida.

Understanding and Improving Salmon Aquaculture 

For Ceballos-Concha, Salmon Aquaculture specifically is also intrinsically linked to his upbringing, as Chile is one of the two major countries producing Atlantic Salmon. Combined with Norway, the two major players account for about 80% of the global production. 

“They are really, capital intensive, technology intensive industries in these two countries,” Ceballos-Concha said. “And so it’s important to study them because they have a huge impact on the environment. So it’s important to understand those impacts and try to make it better so that we can continue to produce in a sustainable way.” 

The first paper looked at previous research to provide an overview of the impacts of Salmon Aquaculture in Chile on the social well-being of coastal communities by gathering information from previously published research articles as well as governmental reports and gray literature. 

His next paper looked at the parasite,  Lepeophtheirus salmonis, a type of sea lice that targets salmonids and can cause problems for salmon farmers when an outbreak renders their products unmarketable and can spread between farms.  

Using Machine Learning to Understand HAB Impacts 

Continuing to draw from the environment around him, Ceballos-Conchas’s final paper focused on using machine learning to understand HAB Impacts on Stone Crab Fisheries in Florida. 

“Stone crabs are one of the most important fisheries in Florida, it generates, like, about $30 million per year,” Ceballos-Conchas  siad. “It’s a small crab that the fisheries capture by setting traps on the bottom of the ocean in the Gulf. So they set the traps, like at the beginning of the season that goes from October to May. And then they regularly go and fish those traps.” 

This study was part of a series of larger grant-funded projects funded by the Gulf of America Coastal Ocean Observing System (GCOOS) and Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) led by Dr. Christa Court to understand the various economic impacts these events can have on different types of economic activity such as recreational and commercial fishing as well as tourism.  

“Red tides are really complex to understand, so we thought that maybe using causal inference through machine learning would make it easier to understand how red tides are affecting different economic activities in Florida,” Ceballos-Concha said.  

This paper serves as a methodological contribution to the field, as well as providing information relevant to stone crab fishers in Florida.  

Looking Forward

After graduating from the FRE Ph.D. program, Ceballos-Concha began a Postdoctoral Associate appointment with the UF School of Forestry Fishery and Geomatic Sciences (SFFGS) where he will be working for Dr. Ed Camp on Florida Sea Grass where they will be trying to understand the impacts of policy creating no motor zones to preserve seagrass from scarring. 

“It’s interesting in that for all these systems, humans and nature interact in a way that, I think, it’s really important to preserve nature, but also important to preserve their economic activities for the people in that community, the fishing communities especially in this case.” 

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