Helene Marsh

Helene Marsh is Emeritus Professor in Environmental Science and a Professorial Fellow at James Cook University. Her qualifications include BSc (Queensland) and PhD (JCU).

Helene is currently the Lead for the Threatened and Migratory Species and Threatened Ecological Communities Mission for the National Environmental Science Program based in the Resilient Landscapes Hub.

Helene is a Fellow of both the Australian Academies of Science and Technological Sciences and Engineering and has received international and national awards for her research. She chaired the national Threatened Species Scientific Committee 2011-2023 and was a Vice-President and Secretary Biological Sciences of the Australian Academy of Science 2019-23. She became an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2021.

The focus of her research is dugong conservation biology. Committed to informing interdisciplinary solutions to conservation problems Helene has collaborated widely with colleagues in other disciplines as varied as Anatomy, Economics, Geography, Law and Psychology.

Throughout the course of her academic career, Helene has supervised 62 PhDs and 21 Master’s candidates to successful completions and has a several more candidates in the pipeline.

Helene became Director of Graduate Studies at JCU in 1997 and was the foundation Dean when the Graduate Research School was established in 2003 until March 2018. Helene has been “Top DDOG” (chair of the Australian Council of Deans and Directors of Graduate Studies) on two separate occasions.

• Marine conservation biology
• Marine natural resource management
• Indigenous marine resource management
• Methodological problems associated with environmental monitoring
• Establishing priorities for conservation intervention
• Marine wildlife population ecology, especially life history, reproductive ecology, population dynamics, diet, distribution, abundance and movements of dugongs and coastal dolphins
• Committed to informing interdisciplinary solutions to conservation problems and has collaborated widely with colleagues in other disciplines including Anatomy, Anthropology, Botany, Biochemistry, Genetics, Geography, GIS, Law, Psychology, Sociology and Statistics
• Policy outcomes include significant contributions to the science base for the Dugong Sanctuary established in Torres Strait; dugong management in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, especially the Dugong Protected Areas and no-take areas to protect dugongs in various zoning plans; and the establishment of a Commonwealth Ministerial Taskforce to Investigate the Sustainability of Indigenous Hunting of Dugongs and Turtles
• Provided science base for review of the global status of dugongs by the IUCN, 2006
• Research has formed a conceptual basis for the ‘Back on Track’ Program conducted by the Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage Protection
• Interactions between people and their environments, particularly in tropical regions such as the Great Barrier Reef and Torres Strait regions
• Briefed the Global Conference on Oceans and Coasts (UNESCO, Paris 2001) on 'The challenge of conserving marine mammals' in preparation for the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg
• Provided science base for development of Dugong Memorandum of Understanding under the International Convention of Migratory Species, 2005-2007