Growth rates in fish are a fundamental predictor of population size, productivity and mortalities. Faster growth rates increase the size of individual fish which leads to higher biomass, reproductive output, lower natural mortality, and increased success in predator-pr...

I hope everyone had a happy xmas and a safe and relaxing break. There are lot’s of congratulations to be had. Congratulations to Kayla who submitted her PhD thesis titled “Tracking trends in hypoxia: a freshwater perspective”. Also congratulations to our Honours studen...

Two men vied to name stable forms of elements with differing masses (e.g. 206Pb, 207Pb, 208Pb). Today we know these are not different elements as originally thought, but rather different isotopes of in this case lead. Frederick Soddy, who received the Nobel Prize for C...

Congratulations to our latest Honours students who have submitted their Honours theses and presented seminars to the Department. Koster completed his project on population structure and connectivity of stout whiting based on otolith chemistry, and Nikita completed her...

Fish have secret lives in complex three-dimensional environments. Yet biologists need a careful understanding of population characteristics and dynamics to sustainably manage wild fish. As direct monitoring can be costly and logistically difficult, scientists are attem...

Well it’s been a while since I updated this page and a lot has happened!

Another graduation ceremony has occurred – congratulations to Jarod Lyon who graduated with his PhD and to the BSc (Marine Biology) students who also graduated at the same ceremony. Also, congratul...

Lost and discarded fishing gear has been an international environmental issue for over 50 years. Globally, over 6.4 million tonnes of fishing gear is accidentally lost, abandoned or deliberately dumped in the ocean each year (Maefadyen et al. 2009). The Australian mari...

Congratulations to Jacob who was awarded the Michael Smyth Memorial Prize for the highest achieving Honours student studying an animal-based project. This was for his Honours research on “The changing conservation role of zoos through time”, undertaken in the Invasion...

Oxygen concentrations in our waters are declining. Since biological and geochemical processes depend on oxygen this decline is concerning. Much of the research has focused on the low oxygen zones (oxygen minimum zones) in our oceans, which are increasing in areal exten...

The term shifting baseline was first used by the fisheries researcher Daniel Pauly in 1995 (Pauly 1995) to describe the way in which changes to an ecological system are measured against past baselines which in themselves may already represent significant change within...