Marine Biology & Aquaculture

Tom Lloyd

Tom Lloyd

Alys Young

Alys Young

William Arlidge

William Arlidge

Anna Wilson

Anna Wilson

Kelly Condon

Kelly Condon

Graeme Cumming

Graeme Cumming

Takahiro Shimada

Takahiro Shimada

Peter Doll

Peter Doll

Michela Mitchell

Michela Mitchell

Jan Strugnell

Jan Strugnell

Incorporating fisheries, food security, livelihoods, and tourism in Marine Protected Area designs in Indonesia – Part 1: Scoping (Old ID 31112)
Reniel Cabral
01 Aug 2023 - 29 Feb 2024
This scoping project funds the initial work of strengthening the relationships with Indonesian researchers and governments, with the long-term goal of generating the science and tools for designing and implementing marine protected areas that support Blue Economy (i.e., fisheries, food security, livelihoods, and tourism) in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
A machine-learning training library of intertidal seagrass ecosystems to support Australia's National Ocean Accounts. (Old ID 27414)
Nicholas Murray
06 Dec 2021 - 01 Apr 2022
The Australian Government, as a member of the High Level Panel for Sustainable Ocean Economy (Ocean Panel), has committed to a range of priority actions, including the development of a complete sequence of national ocean accounts. Seagrass extent and annual change is an integral part of the accounts. Training data on intertidal seagrass extent is needed to support the development of a national intertidal seagrass extent map, which will be a key deliverable of the National Ocean Accounts. This project will therefore conduct the necessary image interpretation tasks to deliver a machine-learning ready training set of Australia’s intertidal seagrass ecosystems.
Research to support sustainable coral harvesting by Australian aquarium industry (Old ID 23641)
Morgan Pratchett
13 Jul 2017 - 12 Jul 2018
An Advance Queensland Knowledge Transfer Partnerships grant awarded to Ultra Coral Australia Pty Ltd is being used to part fund the appointment of a PhD graduate from James Cook University, Dr Ciemon Caballes, to undertake research into the improved sustainability of wild coral harvesting on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. A portion of the grant is awarded directly to JCU to facilitate direct engagement with Ultra Coral Australia Pty Ltd and the recently appointed graduate, further establishing industry links and direct application of ongoing research.
Supercharging barramundi production through advanced selective breeding for improved disease resistance, growth and fillet traits
Dean Jerry
01 Jan 2021 - 31 Dec 2025
Barramundi, or Asian seabass, Lates calcarifer, is the major aquaculture species farmed in Singapore and has wide consumer acceptance due to its white, firm flesh. The barramundi currently farmed in Singapore, however, have not been significantly improved through simultaneous selection to be resistant to major diseases (like scale drop disease), faster growth, or fillet characteristics. This project will use gold standard breeding methodologies that utilise genomics, industrial-scale phenotyping and cutting-edge digital technologies to select for barramundi that are more productive, have whiter flesh and possess a lower risk to farming due to disease in Singaporean waters. Outcomes from the project will be barramundi that have average survival to scale drop disease of 60%, grow 15% faster, and have increased fillet yields and white flesh colouration.
NESP 3.4 Better management of catchment runoff to marine receiving environments in northern Australia. (Old ID 28969)
Nathan Waltham
01 Feb 2023 - 30 Jun 2024
Runoff from catchments in northern Australia has the potential to carry large amounts of sediment and nutrients. These available nutrients are important in driving coastal and estuary productivity, including many commercially and recreationally targeted species. Water resource development in northern Australia could reduce the supply of freshwater flow to the coast, thereby limiting supply of nutrients. This research project will examine the potential risks water resource development presents to Gilbert (QLD), Daly (NT) and Ord (WA) marine and coastal areas. We will complete a literature review, undertake flood plume modelling and examine vegetation damage along these coastal areas.
JCU and Greening Australia alliance: leaders in tropical wetland restoration (Old ID 22951)
Nathan Waltham
01 Sep 2016 - 31 Dec 2017
Greening Australia (GA) is a national not-for-profit organisation that strives towards the vision of healthy and productive landscapes where people and nature thrive. This vision is underpinned by science to guide what’s best for landscapes and people in Australia. Because of this business model, GA has a strong, long term, collaborative, approach to projects and therefore has achieved many sound, high profile outcomes. Projects delivered by GA attract significant financial investment from government, but maybe more so from philanthropic investors. By way of example, GA this year joined forces with Virgin Australia to launch a powerful new initiative (Reef Aid) to restore water quality in the GBR catchment area. As a start, GA has launched a public appeal to raise $10M as a first step towards an estimated $100M restoration campaign over the next 10 years. The Australian Government Reef Trust has already matched contributions up to $2M, and today, GA has $4M ready to start the Reef Aid journey via the instigation of on-ground wetland repair projects. Being focused on on-ground works, these projects lack significant research components. To this end, we propose through this partnership grant to demonstrate the value of research to improving on-ground outcomes and in doing so further our relationship with GA to include our services, via an R&D alliance, as part of further projects they develop through their Reef Aid program in coming years.
Next generation training libraries to support Australia's coastal ecosystem monitoring systems (Old ID 27883)
Nicholas Murray
03 Jan 2023 - 28 Jun 2024
The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water is seeking to develop the training data sets necessary to support the development of continuous ocean and coastal ecosystem extent mapping across the Australian continent. The mapping is expected to underpin the ongoing development of the National Ocean Accounts and other environmental-economic accounting activities. This project involves collecting training datasets to support models I have previously developed (Murray et al., 2022), so that these models can be employed by the Commonwealth for improved coastal mapping and monitoring.
Defining metrics of success for feral animal management in northern Australia (Old ID 23026)
Nathan Waltham
01 Jun 2016 - 31 Dec 2020
Feral animals cause significant damage to aquatic ecosystems across northern Australia, affecting biodiversity, ecosystem function and Indigenous cultural values. Funding for feral animal control often focuses on a particular species, ignoring the iterative and cumulative impact of the feral animals. This project will determine the impact of feral animals (pigs, horses, cattle) across aquatic ecosystems in the context of regional and local feral animal control, local aspirations and government priorities. The project will work closely with the Aak Puul Gnangtam and Kalan Aboriginal Development Groups as they continue implementing feral animal abatement strategies across the Archer River catchment.
Assessing risks to coastal ecosystems with new earth observation models (Old ID 26560)
Nicholas Murray
02 Sep 2019 - 30 May 2022
This project aims to quantify and diagnose the causes of declines in the world's coastal wetland ecosystems. Unprecedented rates of loss have been reported in many coastal ecosystems, but there is a lack of knowledge regarding their distribution, status and trajectory at the global scale. The projuect will integrate earth observation, machine-learning and ecosystem risk assessment methods to deliver new high-resolution time-series data, quantitative knowledge on the influence of social, economic and environmental factors on ecosystem loss, and predictions of different future states of coastal ecosystems. Key benefits include an improved ability to monitor and manage coastal ecosystems in Australia and globally.
Long term benthic dynamics following interventions on macroalgae dominated reefs (Old ID 28962)
Hillary Smith
15 Mar 2023 - 15 Mar 2024
Macroalgae flourish under conditions with high amounts of terrestrial runoff, increased sedimentation and nutrient loading; conditions characteristic of an increasing number of coral reefs globally. These conditions can prompt a shift from coral dominance to an altered, macroalgae-dominated community, with the return of coral dominance rare once fleshy macroalgae have established. By increasing space for growth of existing coral colonies and enhancing available space for coral recruitment, manual removal of macroalgae (“sea-weeding”) has been proposed as one measure to promote reef recovery on macroalgae dominated reefs. This project will monitor the long-term benthic impacts of removing macroalgae from experimental plots on a degraded inshore reef.
Title: JCU reef scientist goes global after plumbing the depths, Townsville Bulletin
Reseracher: Gemma Galbraith (AIMS@JCU Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Reef Connectivity)
Start Date: 10 Nov 2024
Title: Deep dive: How I use robots to survey coral reefs, Nature
Reseracher: Gemma Galbraith (AIMS@JCU Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Reef Connectivity)
Start Date: 31 Mar 2025
Title: Wet Tropics Management Authority - Scientific Advisory Committee
Reseracher: Nathan Waltham (Associate Professor, Blue Carbon)
Start Date: 01 Jan 2024
Title: Aquaculture without Frontiers (AwF), Australia
Reseracher: Simon Das (Research Fellow - Grouper Nutrition)
Start Date: 01 Jan 2024
End Date: 01 Jan 2027
Title: Australian Coral Reef Society
Reseracher: Morgan Pratchett (Professor, Marine Biology & Aquaculture)
Title: International Coral Reef Society
Reseracher: Morgan Pratchett (Professor, Marine Biology & Aquaculture)
Title: BSc Ecology, University of Cape Town
Reseracher: Mark Cyrus (Senior Lecturer Aquaculture Macroalgae)
Start Date: 01 Jan 2004
End Date: 01 Jan 2006
Title: BSc Honours, University of Cape Town
Reseracher: Mark Cyrus (Senior Lecturer Aquaculture Macroalgae)
Start Date: 01 Jan 2007
End Date: 01 Jan 2007
Title: PhD, James Cook University
Reseracher: Leo Nankervis (Associate Professor, Aquaculture)
Start Date: 01 Jan 2002
End Date: 01 Jan 2005
Title: BSc(Hons), James Cook University
Reseracher: Leo Nankervis (Associate Professor, Aquaculture)
Start Date: 01 Jan 1996
End Date: 01 Jan 1999