December 2021

AIMS@UWA Alliance - 2021 Update

2021 was a successful year for the newly established AIMS@UWA Alliance. Since its launch in November 2020, the alliance has established a strong community of academics, early-career postdoctoral researchers, and higher degree by research PhD students. The current cohort of researchers includes 8 PhD candidates, alongside more senior researchers, including program lead Dr Luke Thomas (AIMS@UWA Lead Scientist and Research Fellow), and key researchers Dr Sharyn Hickey (UWA) and Dr Ben Radford (AIMS). 

AIMS@UWA has been instrumental in fostering collaborative high impact, internationally recognised tropical marine research. In 2021, staff from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) were by far the most prolific collaborators measured as co-authored research outputs with members of the Oceans Institute: a credit to the strengths, expertise and synergies of both organisations that is leveraged by this partnership. 

In early 2022, the alliance looks forward to welcoming 6 newly-appointed PhD positions as part of the Reef Song Project, co-funded by AIMS, BHP and supported by UWA as part of the Australian Coral Reef Resilience Initiative (ACRRI), and anticipate at least one other industry-funded addition to this AIMS@UWA PhD student cohort. This healthy growth in PhD numbers will be accompanied by the appointment of two new AIMS@UWA postdoctoral positions for 2022 in:

• Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Marine Challenges (currently under call for applications) and;
• Marine Plastics

AIMS@UWA is set to announce further opportunities into 2023, with a postdoctoral position in Blue Carbon next in the sequence of planned appointments. 

We congratulate all affiliates of the Alliance for a productive and successful year, and look forward to the future build of the AIMS@UWA Alliance into 2022.   

National Environmental Science Program (NESP) Research Update  

The Oceans Institute congratulates and thanks Dr Tim Langlois  and Dr Abbie Rogers for their leadership roles in the South and South-West regional research committees as part of the National Environmental Science Program (NESP) Marine and Coastal Hub. 
 
NESP is a program to fund environment and climate research supported by a long-term commitment from the Australian Federal Government (DAWE). The Marine and Coastal Hub is managed as Northern and Southern Nodes, by the Reef and Rainforest Research Centre and the University of Tasmania.  UWA has joined with a number of other partners in this large collaborative program.  

The program has entered its second phase, with Hub projects established to undertake research that will inform management of Australia’s marine and coastal environments, spanning estuaries, coast, reefs, shelf and deep-water. Currently, a number of limited scoping and small-scale projects are underway, with OI researchers contributing to six projects. 

As part of the Southern Node's activities, the project “Characterising values and identifying indicators and metrics of fish and benthic assemblages within the South-west Corner Marine Park” has been approved with UWA as the lead organisation, with others currently in the works. 

The Southern Node research priorities will be informed by three regional research committees, with Dr Langlois representing the Oceans Institute and UWA as Chair of the South-Western regional research committee, and Abbie Rogers being our representative on the Southern regional research committee.

Well done to Dr Langlois and Dr Rogers for their work to date on local projects, and for helping to shape the work on a national stage. 

Westport Marine Science Program - WAMSI Update 

In 2021, the Western Australian Government announced a partnership with the Western Australian Marine Science Institution (WAMSI) to deliver a three-year science program on the marine environment at Cockburn Sound.
 
The WAMSI Westport Marine Science Program will ensure a rigorous environmental impact assessment for the location of Perth's future container port. The program will facilitate collaboration from numerous experts across physical, biological and social sciences in Western Australia, including members of the OI, to enhance our understanding of the important and unique coastal ecosystems within the sound. 

Keep up to date with news from WAMSI by visiting here. 

Minderoo-UWA Deep Sea Research Centre 

The University of Western Australia (UWA) and the Minderoo Foundation have joined forces to establish a world-leading deep-ocean research centre, to increase understanding about the deepest parts of the worlds oceans.  

The Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre is a multifunctional research lab, with state-of-the-art equipment housed at the Indian Ocean Marine Research Centre (IOMRC) in Perth. The Centre specialises in researching the abyssal (3000- 6000m) and hadal (6000- 11000m) depth zones, representing the deepest 70% of the oceans and the most extreme marine frontiers. 

A recent 25 day expedition aboard RV Pressure Drop, funded by Minderoo and led by founding Centre Director Prof Alan Jamieson together with other UWA scientists explored and mapped key seabed features of the East Indian Ocean at the abyssal and hadal depths. Areas explored included the Wallaby-Zenith Fracture Zone, the North Australian Basin, the Wallaby-Cuvier Escarpment, and the Perth Canyon.

The expedition mapped over 20,000 square kilometres of seafloor, collecting hydrographic data and acquiring over 250 hours of video footage of deep-sea fauna and habitat. When combined, these data will set the backdrop about the region’s deep-sea habitats and environments that will help scientists interpret the results of the first biodiversity and biomass surveys of the East Indian Ocean at such great depths.

As scientific outputs from the Centre advance, a public Opening Event is planned for 1 Feb 2022.  Details will follow but, for now, please ‘save the date’ in your calendar.

TEDx Kings Park - Oceans

On December 1, prominent OI members presented their research to the Perth community at the highly anticipated 'Oceans' TEDx event, hosted at the WA Museum Boola Bardip. The sold out event showcased some of the breadth of our OI members, spanning the science of fear in predator-prey relationships, deep sea biology, and submerged archaeology.  

Dr Emily Lester (Marine Scientist and Shark Researcher, Australian Institute of Marine Science) kicked off with a captivating tale of the important and critical roles that apex predators play in coral reefs. As the interactions between predators and prey are rarely witnessed in the wild, Emily explained how life-sized models of predators influence the behaviour of prey (coral reef fishes) in the presence of a threat (sharks). A great talk, unlocking a  hidden story of our reefs!

Oceans Seminar Series Highlight

Phanom-Surin Ship - Pook Komoot (Presenter)

On November 7, The Oceans Institute hosted the final event in the OI Seminar Series for 2021 at the Indian Ocean Marine Research Centre (IOMRC) building on UWA Crawley campus. The seminar was presented by PhD candidate in Archaeology, Pook Komoot. She presented “What Does the study of Historic Ships mean in the UN Ocean Decade?: A Perspective from the 9th Century Phanom-Surin Ship in Thailand” to an enthusiastic audience.

Pook’s seminar outlined the significant advances made from the analysis of the Phanom-Surin ship, indicating vast historical maritime networks and multicultural connections around the Indian Ocean rim. By examining the materials and methods used to build the ship (Southeast Asian), along with items found on-board (Persian and Chinese), she was able to interpret the ships’ origins and likely travel routes some 1100 years ago. Pook’s research demonstrated well-established cross-cultural contacts among communities along the Indian Ocean.

Pook now has many avenues of further research to consider, with a selection of wooden sewn-planks a key contender to reveal more secrets of the Phanom-Surin ship.

Thanks Pook Komoot and to all who attended this presentation.

Oceans Institute Researchers -  Highly Cited List 2021 

In late November, three OI members Professor Thomas Wernberg, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow Shaun Wilson and Adjunct Professor Carlos Duarte were recognised for their inclusion on the annual Highly Cited Researchers of 2021.

Dr Wernberg's (Professor, School of Biological Sciences) research provides predictors on how coastal sub-tidal habitats will respond to stressors like climate change, invasive species and eutrophication.
 

Dr Wilson’s (Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, UWA Oceans Institute) expertise focuses on the impact that environmental disturbances and pressures have on marine systems (e.g. coral reefs), communities, processes and ecosystem services. 

Dr Duarte’s (Adjunct Professor, UWA Oceans Institute) research aims to understand the effects of global change on marine and freshwater ecosystems spanning tropics to poles. 

Congratulations to our OI members for their world leading achievements!

About the annual highly cited list:

The highly cited list identifies influential and leading researchers within a given field through the publication of highly cited papers during the last decade. Names are drawn from the publications that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and publication year in the Web of Science citation index.
 

The full 2021 Highly Cited Researchers list and executive summary can be found online here. 

Centre for Environmental Economics & Policy (CEEP) update 

Over 2021, Dr Abbie Rogers (OI member and Co-Director of the UWA CEEP) and the Oceans Institute have aligned to build on strengthening a focus on marine and ocean socio-economic research and policy analysis. 

A strategic outcome of our aligned initiatives with CEEP has been the Economics of Marine Protected Areas (MPA), involving several OI members and Adjuncts including Professor Jessica Meeuwig (School of Biological Sciences, UWA), Dr Mark Meekan (Australian Institute of Marine Science) and Dr Gabriel Vianna (School of Biological Sciences, UWA). The team of researchers is investigating the economic costs and benefits of MPAs to better inform the managers with the best economic information to guide decision making for MPA establishment and decision management. 

Read more about their work published in Ecosphere here. 
 

Dr Abbie Rogers 
Senior Research Fellow

The Oceans Institute and our members have had a busy calendar year of events. Here is a list of some of the things the OI and OI Members have been up to over the past year. 

7 Dec - Oceans Institute Seminar Series: Phanom-Surin Ship
2 Dec - Early and Mid Career Researchers (EMCR) Network Event:  Meet Our Institutes
1 Dec - TEDx Oceans. TEDx Kings Park series with talks from 3 OI members
16 Nov - Official launch of Marine Energy Research Australia (MERA)
4 Nov - Robson and Robertson Young Scholar Program Awards
27 Oct - Presentation Skills Workshop for HDR Students
26 Oct - Ocean Decade Australia (ODA) - ODA Stakeholder Briefing: Behaviour and Action for Change as part of Ocean Decade Australia's series
6 Oct - PEAC Kids Outreach Event – Uluu partnered event with young school students able to produce their own edible plastic using alginate
Early Oct - Eurekamp OZ - OI in partnership with PEiPL hosted ‘Oceans 21’
15 Sep - Minderoo Exmouth Research Lab (MERL) Launch
2 Sep - AIMS@UWA Research Symposium
19 Aug - Minderoo-UWA Marine Heatwaves Workshop
13 Aug - Talk entitled Key economic concepts marine scientists should know
4 Aug - Perspectives on Decommissioning workshop 
21 July - Coastal Futures: Regional resilience in the face of a changing climate
8 July - Blue is the new Green (enormous blue carbon potential, these bio-diverse hotspots are ground zero in the war on climate change)
21 June - Coastal Futures: Planning and adaptation in a changing climate
28 April - UN Decade of Ocean Science and the 2nd Indian Ocean Expedition
24 April - Southern Ports Albany Open Day        
14 April - Influencing environmental policy with science
7-8 April - Shark Bay (Gathaagudu) Seagrass Festival
3 March - A Liquid Future (Lunch and Learn)
18 Feb - Oceans Graduate School Student Society Poster Presentations
11 Feb - OceansWorks Intern Seminar
4 Feb - Blue Ocean Seminar - Advances in Fish Pen Designs and Mooring Systems Webinar