November 2018 news update

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 project on microplastics in sediments of Spencer Gulf. Sidney has also completed his BSc Advanced project working with Alice to investigate different allometric relationships for assessing mangrove biomass.

Bronwyn, Troy and Jasmin all attended the Australian Society of Fish Biology (ASFB) annual conference in Melbourne, presenting oral presentations on their research. Bronwyn also facilitated a workshop for postgraduate students and early career researchers on skills for getting a job. ASFB is always a great conference to catch up with everyone and this time was no exception with a number of ex lab members present including Chris, Kat, Tom and Nastaran.

Several of us (Bronwyn, Jasmin, Jackson) also attended the 2018 Women in Water breakfast. The event addressed unconscious bias in the workplace. The panel of speakers, which included Bronwyn, addressed why it matters and what can be done about it.

Our coastal carbon project was a finalist in the SA Climate Leaders Awards as part of the Goyder Institute suite of projects addressing climate related issues. Alice and Bronwyn attended the awards ceremony at the SA Museum where a diverse range of projects were recognised.

Alice is about to head out to the Investigator group.The trip is a research and monitoring expedition to South Australian and Commonwealth offshore marine protected areas and surrounding waters (officially called ‘Investigator Marine Park and Western Eyre Marine Park monitoring and research expedition’) organised by the Department for Environment and Water. She will be onboard the MRV Ngerin and the group of researchers will be undertaking a variety of monitoring and sampling to better understand these remote marine environments and the species that live in them.

New papers from the lab include:

McMillan et al. (2018) Partial female migration and use of cool-water migration pathways in an overfished shark. ICES Journal of Marine Science (not yet available on line)

Martino et al. (2019) Metabolic effects on carbon isotope biomarkers in fish. Ecological Indicators 97: 10-16 (see Jasmin’s blog here)