Shirleen Bala has a BSc, PGD and MSc in Marine Science from the University of the South Pacific.  After graduating with her BSc, she worked for Fiji’s Ministry of Fisheries and Forests- Naduruloulou Freshwater Aquaculture Section for 4 years, where she gained hands-on experience in fish breeding and husbandry, culture techniques and aquaculture farm maintenance, proposal and report writing.  Later she was hired by IMR to work under the Institute’s Aquaculture Project. She then took over as Co-ordinator of the Coral Reef Initiative for the South Pacific (CRISP) program.

Ms Bala’s MSc thesis was on post larval reef fish capture and culture and release, where she gained knowledge on fish capture of post larval fish using light traps, marine fish husbandry under artificial conditions, field monitoring and wild fish capture. She also trained for 2 months at  the Institute of Research and Development (IRD) in New Caledonia on otolith analysis techniques in fish ageing. She currently assists in IMR/SMS Aquaculture projects and carries out administrative work at IMR.