Rene Umberger

Rene Umberger is the Founder and Executive Director of For the Fishes, a Hawaii based non-profit dedicated to protecting coral reefs and wildlife. She is the creator of Tank Watch, an award winning mobile app aimed at reducing consumer demand for illegal wildlife captured by the marine aquarium trade. A former scuba instructor and underwater guide, Umberger has made over 10,000 dives on reefs throughout Hawaii and the Indo-Pacific.

In 2012 she began collaborating with researchers at the University of Aveiro in Portugal on their project detecting live reef fish illegally collected using cyanide. This was in follow-up to their original work in which they developed a non-invasive and non-destructive approach where fish were not harmed or sacrificed in the process.

In 2015 she sourced an independent U.S. lab and began testing fish in the U.S. using methodology modified from the Portuguese techniques. Also in 2015 she met Dr. Craig A. Downs, academic researcher and industrial biotechnologist, and invited him to join the project as a collaborator.

August 2016