August news update

Semester 2 has commenced with Bronwyn teaching Marine ecology/biology for the first 4 weeks. We are also back from a fantastic 2 week trip to Timor Leste during the break. Sixteen undergraduate students took our Sciences International study tour funded through the Australian Government’s New Colombo Plan – this involved undertaking a PADI SCUBA diving course in Dili, the capital plus an extra day of diving with Desmond and crew from Dive Aquatica. We then travelled to Com with Conservation International staff to spend time snorkeling in the buffer zone on their no-take marine protected area and monitoring seagrass. Despite being just 215km from Dili, it took all day to travel to Com.

The annual Australian Society for Fish Biology conference was late July in Albany, Western Australia. Bronwyn, as winner of last year’s Kay Radway Allen award, was a plenary speaker. Her plenary was titled “Ear bones of fish: turning points in fish and fisheries science”. Are you aware that Aristotle in ~350BC stated in his book Historia Animalium that “The age of a scaly fish may be told by the size and hardness of its scales”. We’ve come a long way since then!

Bronwyn was also honoured to be chosen as one of the finalists for SA Scientist of the Year in the SA Science Excellence Awards. Winners will be announced at the gala dinner on August 11th.