Bonnie McCay is Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor at Rutgers University, New Brunswick in the Department of Human Ecology. Her graduate training was in anthropology at Columbia University (PhD 1976), and her research and teaching have focused on challenges and policies for managing marine resources, particularly fisheries.
She has done field research in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, Canada, in New Jersey, and in Baja California, Mexico, with funding from the National Science Foundation, the New Jersey Sea Grant College Program, and the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station.