Monroe County
Shelly
Krueger
County Extension Agent
About
Shelly grew up on Lake Michigan where family time was spent fishing and enjoying the outdoors from the Great Lakes to a remote cabin in Canada and down to the Florida Keys. Fishing was a family affair from the time she could cast a rod and she was very good at catching bait for freshwater fishing – earthworms, crawfish, and crickets. Shelly thinks that looking under rotten logs, rocks, and between wood piles led to her career choice to be a marine biologist! After her grandparents moved to Anna Maria Island, Florida the stage was set as her grandfather brought her and her brother out to low tides to collect fish and crabs for her saltwater aquarium. Shelly found a tiny black-edge moray eel stranded on an exposed sandbar, named him Gizmo, and had him in her tank in Michigan for many years. Shelly feels very fortunate to have a family that appreciates the natural environment and spent so much time outside skiing, snorkeling, fishing, and riding bikes.
Shelly obtained her B.S. from Georgia Tech in Science, Technology, and Culture, where she was a National Science Foundation STEP Fellow. Shelly was an undergraduate intern at Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium in Sarasota where she maintained public aquaria exhibits, the decapod culture room, and an independent project for the Brazilian seahorse Hippocampus reidi. She obtained her M.S. at Savannah State University in Marine Sciences, where she was a NOAA Living Marine Resources Cooperative Science Center Fellow and completed her master’s thesis focused on Eastern oyster restoration. As a master’s student, Shelly was a Dean John A. Knauss Fellow and spent one year at NOAA headquarters in the National Marine Fisheries Service Office of Protected Resources assisting staff to implement the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Prior to coming to the University of Florida, Shelly was a research technician at the University of Georgia Marine Extension on Skidaway Island, Savannah, GA at the Shellfish Research Lab.
As a marine biologist and Extension agent, Shelly feels very grateful to spend her career using science to educate residents and visitors about the ocean’s flora and fauna. When people of all ages are immersed in nature, it inspires appreciation and stewardship for our natural resources.
Projects, Research, and Specializations
Shelly Krueger is an Extension faculty at the University of Florida and the Florida Sea Grant Extension Agent III in the Florida Keys. She is also a PhD student at UF School of Forest, Fisheries, and Geomatics Sciences in Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, majoring in sponge restoration aquaculture. Shelly’s Extension work focuses on water quality, habitat restoration, fisheries, and coral reef disturbances, primarily stony coral tissue loss disease, coral bleaching, Sargassum, and aquatic invasive species.
Citizen science is a major component of her work and she enjoys teaching and training all ages how to identify corals, report coral bleaching and disease, count and tag horseshoe crabs, microplastics, marine debris, and many other programs. Shelly is a Florida Master Naturalist lead instructor and wrote the Sponge Restoration module for the UF/IFAS Florida Master Naturalist Program Marine Habitat Restoration.
Shelly is appointed to the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary Water Quality Protection Program Steering Committee and the chair of the City of Key West Sustainability Advisory Board. She is the vice-chair of the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council Outreach and Communications Advisory Panel on the Gulf Council Outreach and Education Technical Committee and chair of the Coral Advisory Panel. Shelly co-leads Florida’s Coral Reef Resilience Program Communications Team and works closely with state, federal, and local resource agencies, and non-profit organizations to collaborate on programs to benefit the natural resources and economy of the state of Florida.
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