Cathy Hair

Cathy completed her undergraduate degree in Biological Oceanography at the University of New South Wales in 1983. While working for NSW FRI on environmental impact assessment on marine temperate reefs, she completed her MSc on enhancement of artificial structures to improve fish recruitment. From 1992 to 1996 Cathy was involved in the development of databases, resource surveys and management for Papua New Guinea fisheries, then briefly in the PNG Highlands on a database program with an international NGO. Returning to Australia for 2 years, she worked on a post-larval coral reef fish database at AIMS, and as an environmental consultant. From 1999-2004, she investigated the capture and culture of post-larval coral reef species (PCC) for the aquarium trade as a sustainable livelihood for Pacific Island communities in Solomon Islands.

Since returning to Australia in 2004, Cathy has been involved in Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR)-funded projects on sustainable aquaculture development in the Pacific Islands region and northern Australia – initially at the Northern Fisheries Centre and with JCU since 2007. Her focus is on mariculture of the valuable sea cucumber, Holothuria scabra (sandfish). She is currently engaged in a JCU-ACIAR mariculture capacity building project in Kavieng, with the specific role to develop community sea ranching of commercial sea cucumber species. This is also the subject of her part-time PhD thesis, which aims to identify optimum places and methods to carry out sea cucumber farming, and examine how Pacific island communities that traditionally fish wild sea cucumbers will respond to this new mariculture activity.