Team

Rich Little

Rich Little is a Senior Research Scientist at CSIRO Environment in Hobart, Australia, and Principal Investigator for the Southeast Australian Marine Ecosystem Survey (SEA-MES). His research specialises in modelling population dynamics, economics, and management decision-making in natural resource and marine environmental science.

Karen is a marine ecologist whose research is focused on improving scientific understanding and developing options that improve marine resource conservation and management. She leads a range of projects aimed at ascertaining changes in the biology of commercial fisheries species in SE Australia and filling gaps in understanding to ensure assessments used for managing fisheries support sustainability.

Matt is a marine ecologist specialising in spatial processes, who has worked at CSIRO in 2004. He has experience in a wide range of field, laboratory and data handling skills that have supported a variety of research projects within CSIRO. He leads the SEA-MES Trawl Catch team and in preparation for the voyages.

Clothilde is a physical oceanographer and modeller, interested in linking large scale ocean circulation and cross-shelf exchanges to coastal dynamics and impacts, to inform adaptation and management of our coastal resources.

Jeff is a quantitative ecologist and modeller at CSIRO in Hobart, Tasmania. His work specialises in the application of qualitative mathematical modelling to generally describe the pelagic and benthic ecosystems underpinning SE Australian fisheries, integrate alternative hypotheses possibly affecting them, and identify informative ecological indicators.

Heidi is a quantitative marine ecologist with broad interests in trophodynamics, biochemistry, bioenergetics, and ecosystem modelling. Much of her work has involved studying marine food webs in the South East Australian region, with a particular emphasis on understanding the diets and habitat use of marine predators, species interactions, and the effects of climate change and fishing on marine organisms and ecosystems.

Mibu is a Quandamooka woman and Marine Ethnoecologist with a background in marine ecology. She works in the interface of Indigenous science and knowledge and Western science with specific context for fisheries, climate change and livelihoods.

Rowan is a marine systems ecologist whose research is focused on the design and implementation of ecological and social-ecological assessments, including underpinning monitoring and observations, to support sustainable management and climate adaptations for marine social-ecological systems. On the SEA-MES voyage his focus will be on quantifying impacts to benthic habitat driven by exposure to bottom-contact fishing.

Cindy Bessey is a Marine Ecologist at CSIRO Environment in Perth, Western Australia. Her passion is understanding the role of lower trophic level organisms (such as fish, invertebrates, and seagrass) in sustaining diverse, productive, and healthy ecosystems. As part of the SEA-MES team, she is working on advancing environmental DNA (eDNA) collection techniques to obtain integrated eDNA samples at depth along a transect.

Dr Ian Knuckey is the principal of Fishwell Pty Ltd providing research, development and extension services to encourage and promote sustainable fishing practices. He has a PhD in fisheries population dynamics, and has been working in the Southeastern Australia since 1985. He is currently the scientific representative on the Southern and Eastern Scalefish and Shark (SESSF) Resource Assessment Group.

Carlie Devine is a Research Technician in the Sustainable Marine Futures (SMF) Program, based in Hobart, Australia. She works to capture video images of seabirds and use Edge AI for real-time detection, providing insights into bird populations potentially impacted by human activities, and as part of the team identifying marine invertebrates.

Jamie (Jam) Graham-Blair is a trawlwoolway and plengarmaireenner pakana, Tasmanian Aboriginal person with a background in education, activism, conservation and ecology. As a CSIRO Indigenous Research Program graduate, Jam works with GSM/Seafloor mapping, CTD setup, Multinet plankton sampling, Seabird Edge detection and observation, data entry, and fish biological sampling.

Claire has worked at CSIRO since 2008. She is a skilled phytoplankton and zooplankton taxonomist analysing samples from the NRS and Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) surveys as funded by IMOS. She has a strong background in data base management and statistical analysis of ecosystem data. Claire is also an ADAS qualified diver and dive supervisor and a coxswain. She is currently the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) BioGeoChemical (BGC) Project Leader, coordinating sampling teams and logistics for the National References Stations (NRS), the IMOS BGC Steering Committee chair and the phytoplankton expert co-lead on the GOOS BioEco Panel. She also leads the IMOS Biological Ocean Observer development - https://shiny.csiro.au/BioOceanObserver/

Sahan is a marine geneticist and plankton biologist who is focused on developing practical applications for monitoring ecosystems. As part of the SEA-MES project, he is working on evaluating different eDNA sampling methods to provide guidance on future oceanic voyages and biodiversity managers with long-term monitoring.

Ruth’s interests are in multi-disciplinary approaches to measuring ecosystem state and trends. She combines a background in chemical oceanography, ecotoxicology and environmental impact assessment with high resolution taxonomy of marine protist communities. Her favourite tools are electron microscopy for fine-scale analysis of community composition, and novel applications of sensors and remote samplers for hard-to-sample locations. She is an adjunct researcher with the University of Tasmania, and an affiliate with the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership, and works as a taxonomist with the Australian National Algae Culture Collection, and the Environment Research Unit at CSIRO. She loves anything to do with phytoplankton.

Felicity is a marine ecologist at CSIRO who has worked across zooplankton and phytoplankton identification, identification of invertebrates from trawls, epifaunal and benthic samples including introduced marine pests, TEPs and data management. On SEA-MES she is involved with sampling the plankton using the multi-net and CTD water as well as invertebrate ids from the trawls.