Born in Portugal in 1971, Isabel studied Aquatic Sciences at the Abel Salazar Biomedical Sciences Institute. She did an internship at the Genoa Aquarium and worked at the Lisbon Oceanarium from 1997 to 2005. In 2003, she earned her master’s degree in Ethology at the Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada, Lisbon, Portugal. The subject of her final thesis was “The Impact of Visitor Behavior on the Behavior of Fish in Aquariums.” In 2006, she moved to Mozambique, where she began working as a volunteer for the Zoological Society of London and then for Cabo Delgado Biodiversidade e Turismo/Maluane on the island of Vamizi. Her Ph.D. thesis was conducted at the University of Aveiro between 2011 and 2015 on the subject of “Ecological and Social Effects of Co-management: A Case Study in Northern Mozambique.” In 2009, she joined the University of Lúrio, where, in addition to teaching and conducting research, she has taken on various roles: director of the Master’s Courses, scientific director of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, and director of the Center for Environmental Studies and Conservation. In service of UniLúrio (through the Environmental Research and Conservation Center), she has conducted various environmental impact studies for private companies.

Since 2006, she has been working on marine conservation in Cabo Delgado, mainly focusing on fisheries co-management issues and developing the Community Sanctuary on the island of Vamizi.

Her great passion is scuba diving, which she began practicing in 1992, after which she took the PADI instructor course. With more than 2000 hours of diving, many of them in Cabo Delgado, in 2015, she published a book on identifying fish in Pemba Bay.