Rich is an Honorary Research Fellow with UQ School of the Environment and the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science who focuses on how human food production systems affect our planet. His main research interests lie in the field of aquaculture – the farming of fish, seaweeds and aquatic invertebrates – and particularly how this rapidly growing food sector can evolve to sustainably provide a critical source of food and nutrition to a human population growing in number and affluence under global change.
Through data synthesis, spatial analysis, and ecological modelling, Rich’s research aims to understand the trajectory of aquaculture growth through three main approaches. The first focuses on the growth potential of aquaculture in response to demand given its need for space and inputs (e.g., feed). The second is understanding the environmental and social impacts of aquaculture’s current and projected growth. And the third is to understand how this picture changes amid a backdrop of meteorological and geopolitical shock events and sustained pressures of climate change.
He is currently developing decision-making tools for project partners in the aquaculture feed industry to minimise their environmental footprint at both global and local scales.
I am a comparative and environmental physiologist based at the University of Queensland. My research focuses primarily how the environment constrains the physiology of invertebrates, fish, amphibians and reptiles. I have a highly diverse research program that incorporates fundamental, curiosity-driven research and increasingly, a more applied research agenda in the emerging field of conservation physiology. Conservation physiology explores the responses of organisms to anthropogenic threats and attempts to determine the ecophysiological constraints dictated by current conditions and future environmental change. My research interests encompass the general areas of osmo- and ion-regulation, digestive and thermal physiology, environmental drivers of physiological function (specifically immune function and disease susceptibility) and animal performance in anthropogenically modified environments.
