Dr. Fabio Moretzsohn (1964-2020)

Dr. Moretzsohn was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of Life Sciences, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. Formerly, he was Assistant Research Scientist at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies for 11 years. He also served as Subject Matter Expert at Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative Information and Data Cooperative (GRIIDC), and as Managing Editor and Science Editor for the U.S.A. at GulfBase.org. Prior to moving to Texas in 2004, Fabio worked as Assistant Invertebrate Zoologist at Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii.

He was interested in systematics, biodiversity and conservation of marine invertebrates, especially mollusks. His research has taken him to collecting field trips in Brazil, Peru, Japan, Hawaii, Micronesia, and other Pacific Islands. He visited most of the main molluscan collections in museums in the U.S.A. and several abroad for his taxonomic research and was the taxonomic editor of the family Cypraeidae (Mollusca: Gastropoda) in the World Registry of Marine Species (WoRMS).

Dr. Moretzsohn was one of the 140 authors of Gulf of Mexico: Origin, Water and Biota. Volume 1-Biodiversity, published by Texas A&M University (TAMU) Press (Felder and Camp, eds. 2009), and led the group of researchers on the molluscan chapters. In collaboration with GulfBase's Patrick Michaud, and The Nature Conservancy's Jorge Brenner, he converted the long checklists of the biota of the Gulf of Mexico and developed an online database, the Biodiversity of the Gulf of Mexico (BioGoMx) database available at GulfBase. Through collaboration with IUCN Red List, species-specific conservation status, threats and more detailed distribution of fishes and selected organisms were added to a new version of BioGoMx, which will eventually become IUCN Red List's regional portal for the Gulf of Mexico.

He also authored with colleagues Encyclopedia of Texas Seashells, published by TAMU Press (Tunnell et al., 2010), The Book of Shells, a popular book published by the University of Chicago Press (Harasewych and Moretzsohn, 2010), and Texas Seashells, a Field Guide , published by TAMU Press (Tunnell et al., 2014).

His most recent book, Pictorial Field Guide to Deep-Sea Organisms of the Gulf of Mexico (Moretzsohn and Benfield, 2015), was created to assist Remotely-operated Vehicle (ROV) pilots from the oil & gas industry identify deep-sea organisms. The book was published in limited edition by the Harte Research Institute.

Dr. Moretzohn passed away in 2020.