Please welcome Nikolas Kuncis to Whitney Lab! He joins the Ibarra-Castro Lab as an aquaculture technician.
Nikolas earned his B.Sc. in Marine Biology from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale. He worked in the Fish and Avian Ecology lab on multiple projects ranging from microplastics in forage fish of South Florida, Optic lobe size comparison of South Florida Teleosts, and population ecology studies on Amberjack and Barracuda. He was also a recipient of the NOAA Hollings Scholarship where he did a summer research project in Washington state at the Manchester National Marine Fisheries and Science Center on the metabolic phenotypes of three Salmonid species.
Nikolas prefers to go by Niko (Knee-co) and is a Florida native and loves to be on or near the water. While attending school, he also worked as an offshore fishing guide. Fishing is one of Niko’s favorite pastimes. His passion is aquaculture and he will be working with Dr. Leonardo Ibarra-Castro on a project with Atlantic Croaker. If he is not in the lab he is most likely either fishing, cooking, walking around looking at fish, or paddleboarding.