Josephine Pierrat is passionate about marine biology since she was young. On a trip to Palau more than 10 years ago where her encounters with the fabulous coral reef and the jellyfish lake convinced her to undertake studies in marine biology to devote her career to it.

Josephine holds a  doctorate in marine biology, specialist in the ecology of sea cucumbers. She studied tropical species of sea cucumbers during her PhD studies on Reunion Island (a French island located in the Indian Ocean), where she focused her research on their diet, their reproductive modes, their relation with sedimentary factors and their spatio-temporal dynamics over more than two years on two coral reefs. She is now working as a postdoctoral fellow in the Mercier lab, where she mainly study the ecology of cold-water sea cucumbers in the Arctic Canadian in relation to commercial fishing initiatives and the creation of a marine protected area in this region.

Josephine is a member of the Species Survival Commission (SSC) Young Professional group of the IUCN, and also a member of APECS, the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists. In parallel, Josephine enjoys recreational diving. She has a recreational licence up to 60 m depth and her professional licence to 30 m.

The Mercier lab is based at the Ocean Sciences Centre of Memorial University (St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada). The head of the lab is the Professor Annie Mercier, a world-renowned specialist, particularly for her work on sea cucumbers. The research of the lab covers various fields in marine biology, with a primary focus on fundamental and applied aspects of benthic ecology (e.g. drivers of reproduction, larval ecology, population structure, species interactions, response to stress, aquaculture programs). Echinoderms (sea cucumbers, sea stars, sea urchins, etc.) and cnidarians (corals, sea anemones) are mainly studied in the cold waters of the Canadian Atlantic coasts and deep sea, and the Canadian Arctic with the collaboration of Indigenous organizations.