About Me: Amanda Nickson is the Director of International Fisheries at Pew. Amanda joined Pew in 2010, leading on advocacy efforts with regional fisheries management organizations to address the conservation and management of sharks, tuna and other valuable marine species. At the helm of Pew’s international work on tuna 2012 to 2017, she lead work to secure effective management of both Atlantic and Pacific Bluefin tunas, as well as work in the Pacific toward development of harvest strategies and gear regulations for fishing of bigeye and skipjack tunas. The global tuna conservation project produced the world’s first economic estimate of the value of tuna fisheries globally, as well as ground-breaking publications on the number of fish aggregating devices deployed annually. With her portfolio now expanded to cover all of Pew’s international fisheries work, Nickson and her team are focused on delivering conservation and management of tunas and sharks, as well as work to end illegal fishing and roll out fisheries reforms in European waters.

Before joining Pew, Nickson worked for WWF for nearly 12 years, including leading international efforts to protect threatened charismatic species including tigers, pandas and marine turtles. Nickson also developed and led WWF’s Bycatch Initiative, a major policy and field program aimed at reducing the incidental catch of non-target species in fisheries in more than 20 countries throughout the world.

Nickson started her career in health promotion policy, serving as the New South Wales state lead for the National Breast Cancer Centre in Australia, working at the nexus between policy and health services delivery. She also ran the first publicly funded campaign to prevent homophobic violence, which won the Australian government’s Violence Prevention Award.
Nickson initially studied at the University of Queensland, but considers her career path more akin to an apprenticeship with some of the world’s greatest conservationists.