Anthony Richardson

Designing innovative approaches in marine conservation

The new agreement to increase area-based protection targets globally to 30% by 2030 (currently 8% in the ocean), combined with the recent UN treaty to help protect the high seas, will likely result in the largest-ever expansion of marine protected areas. Our aim is to provide the marine spatial planning approaches and tools to underpin this expansion.

We offer various PhD projects in marine spatial planning, focusing on designing protected areas that include:

• Climate change (climate-smart conservation), including climate connectivity (i.e., how best to protect species that shift their distribution in response to climate change).
• How to conserve biodiversity in a 3-D ocean 8 km deep.
• Multiple-use spatial planning (i.e., how to zone the ocean for different uses, such as conservation, fishing, renewable energy, shippping and mining).
• Maximising ecosystem services (e.g., carbon sequestration, serving as nursery grounds for fisheries, and coastal protection).
• Assessing the benefits and tradeoffs between fisheries and protected areas.
• How best to prioritise coastal restoration.
• How to deliver marine spatial planning in the high seas.
• Connectivity of marine megafauna in protected area networks.
• Protecting critical habitats of mobile species.
• Connectivity of seeds and spawning products (eggs and larvae) transported by ocean currents.

Our projects address some of the most-pressing challenges in conservation science. We are looking for students interested in conservation and wants to improve their programming skills.

How is global change impacting global marine systems

Global change is heavily impacting marine systems thorough warming, ocean acidification, overfishing, pollution, eutrophications, mining and invasive species. We are offering projects investigating time series from around the world:

• How are plankton, at the base of the food web, impacted by climate change?
• How are global fish populations responding?
• Are species doing better inside protected areas?
• How does climate variablity affect populations?
• Can we develop a global bioregionalisation based on ecological rather than physical data?
• How are Australia's marine ecosystem responding to climate change?

We are looking for a students interested in understanding how humans are impacting our oceans and in improving their statistical and programming skills.

Using size spectrum ecosystem models to investigate impact of climate change on global fisheries

Understanding the role of zooplankton is arguably the biggest gap in our knowledge of the ocean carbon cycle. Addressing this gap is therefore critical to improving projections of global carbon sequestration under climate change. Zooplankton constitute 40% of total marine biomass and have diverse roles in active and passive vertical carbon transport across the world’s oceans. Yet all these features are poorly resolved in biogeochemical and ecosystem models. Developing new ways to model zooplankton is key to solving this puzzle. In this project we aim to further resolve zooplankton traits and processes in an innovative ecosystem model. We will use the model to explore present and future impacts of climate change on the global ocean’s capacity to regulate carbon in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Working with an international team of zooplankton ecologists, applied mathematicians and climate change scientists, the PhD student will develop a next-generation global marine ecosystem model that resolves important pathways of carbon transport through the zooplankton. Using this model, the student will quantify the role of zooplankton in regulating the biological pump under climate change.

The ideal candidate would have demonstrated skills in dynamical modelling (e.g., using differential or difference equations), coding experience (in any programming language), and strong written and communication skills. You do not need to have experience in marine ecology, but you must have a keen interest to learn.