Each year since 2000, the steering committee of the Mote Symposium awards two Young Investigators, one for best oral presentation and one for best poster. Young investigators include graduate students and individuals who received the Ph.D. degree no more than five years before the meeting. The list of awardees appears below.

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2015

• Best Talk - Antonella Rivera, Universidad de Oviedo Spain
  Sustainability of the gooseneck barnacle TURF system in Asturias: trends, drivers and basic principles.
• Honorable Mention Talk - Ruleo A. Camacho, University of Maine
  Antigua’s community-based no-take reserves: Developing a bottom-up TURF for coral reef ecosystems
• Best poster - Kristine Beran, University of Rhode Island
  Territorial user rights in the Gambia: successful enabling conditions and stakeholder empowerment in the artisanal sole fishery

2011

• Talk - Laura K. Blamey (postdoc), University of Cape Town, South Africa
  Modelling the impacts of depleting top predators: could a regime shift have been prevented? (abstract )
• Poster - Karen Elisabeth Brun (undergraduate), University of Florida
  Nonconsumptive effects and their role in salt marsh trophic cascades (abstract )

2008

• Talk - Geoffrey Shester, Stanford University
  Empirical analysis of fine-scale spatial behavior and fishing strategies in the Baja California lobster fishery (abstract )
• Poster - Ronald J. Maliao. Florida Institute of Technology
  Impact of comanagement of marine protected areas in the Philippines (abstract )

2006

• Talk - David S. Boukal, University of Bergen
  Irreversible evolutionary changes in life histories of exploited fish (abstract )
• Poster - Kate I. Siegfried. University of California, Santa Cruz
  When can we assume a constant natural mortality for fish populations? An application to California sheephead (Semicossyphus pulcher) (abstract )

2004

• Talk - Trevor A. Branch, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington
  Good and ugly multispecies fisheries: ITQs in British Columbia versus retention limits on the U.S. West Coast (abstract )
• Poster - Katy K. Doctor, Sustainable Fishery Advocates, Santa Cruz, California
  Impacts of point-of-sale labeling on consumer choice (coauthored with Teresa Ish and Michelle D. Benoit) (abstract )

2002

• Talk - Sarah K. Gaichas, NMFS Alaska Fisheries Science Center, Seattle, Washington
  Trade-offs between fisheries and marine mammals in Gulf of Alaska and Eastern Bering Sea (coauthored with Kerim Aydin and Bob Francis) (abstract )
• Poster - Teresa Ish, University of California, Santa Cruz
  Environment, krill, and squid: from life history to fisheries (abstract )

2000

• Talk - Shelton Harley, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia
  Density dependent catchability: consequences for management targets (abstract )
• Poster - Dan Kehler, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia
  Managing to prevent local extinctions: the estimation and consequences of variability among populations (abstract )