Kevern Cochrane Biography
Kevern Cochrane was born in Cape Town, South Africa, but moved to Zimbabwe at an early age. He studied at the University of Zimbabwe, graduating with a B.Sc. (Hons) degree in Zoology and Geology in 1973. After a brief spell teaching, he joined the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management in Zimbabwe. His research for the Department was on the introduced freshwater sardine (Limnothrissa miodon) in Lake Kariba and the fishery utilising it. This work led to the award of a M.Phil. degree from the University of Zimbabwe in 1978.
This was followed by nearly five years of teaching in Pretoria, South Africa after which Dr Cochrane joined the National Institute for Water Research of the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. Here his research on fish population dynamics formed part of a multi-disciplinary study on nutrient cycling within an hypertrophic impoundment, Hartbeespoort Dam. This research contributed to the award of a Ph.D. in 1985 for a thesis entitled 'The population dynamics and sustainable yield of the major fish species in Hartbeespoort Dam'.
During the late 1980s, a turbulent time in South Africa, Dr Cochrane left science for a period of 18 months during which he was a full-time justice and reconciliation worker for the Church of the Province of Southern Africa (Episcopalian), where his activities centred on the provision of educational support to black scholars and facilitating contact between black and white South Africans on a range of levels.
At the end of 1988, he returned to science joining the Sea Fisheries Research Institute (SFRI) in Cape Town. During this time his work mainly involved research into environmental influences on the dynamics of small pelagic fish before he came more directly involved in stock assessment, resulting in his appointment as Head of the Stock Assessment Division of SFRI. While at SFRI, he was Chairman of the Benguela Ecology Programme from 1992 to 1994 and then served on the Advisory Committee for this Programme. During this period he also contributed to the development and implementation of the South African 'Sea and the Coast Programme' which has brought together professionals from a wide range of disciplines and representatives of the user communities and groups in order to investigate means of improving the utilization and management of the country's marine resources.
In October 1995, Dr Cochrane joined the Fishery Resources Division of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation where he is still based. In this position he is responsible for providing technical support to FAO fishery-related activities in the Caribbean area and the south east Atlantic. He is also involved in FAO activities to implement the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, which task has included the production of technical guidelines for fisheries management in accordance with the Code of Conduct. The combined experiences at FAO and the SFRI have resulted in a particular interest in the improvement of fisheries management in order to be able to optimize consistently the potential benefits from fisheries in a sustainable manner, particularly within developing countries.
