our Team

Meet the people working to make a difference

Staff

Adam Davey

Adam is our taxonomist; he has a passion for all marine invertebrates, particularly polychaetes and isopods. Understanding and analysing how marine invertebrates respond to human impacts is a key part of his work with the Aquaculture Environment Team. Contact Adam if you want to find out more about the macrofauna communities around aquaculture sites.

Alex Coutts

Alex is a technician as part of our field and laboratory teams. Alex's specialist skills include scientific diving and the use of DNA technologies for biodiversity monitoring. Contact Alex to find out more about how we use eDNA for environmental monitoring of aquaculture.

Andrew Pender

Andrew is our overarching fieldwork manager, keeping the data coming in. Contact Andrew if you would like to know more about the logistics of our fieldwork.

Benjamin Graham

Ben is part of our field, laboratory and report-writing teams, with a key focus on our monitoring work in Macquarie Harbour. He completed his Honours and Masters in New Zealand, where he investigated how New Zealand bull kelp species respond to climate change. Contact Ben to learn more about how this research supports environmental monitoring and management.

Caillin Wise

Caillin is a key member of our field team, with broad experience across rocky reef and soft sediment ecosystems. Her work focuses on understanding how these environments respond to human activities such as aquaculture and associated remediation strategies. Contact Caillin to learn more about how this research supports environmental monitoring and management.

Camille White

Camille heads up our research team and specialises in aquaculture environment interactions and coastal ecosystem health. Her research explores how all forms of coastal aquaculture influence nutrient dynamics, trophic pathways and biodiversity in marine systems, with a particular focus on reef habitats and seaweed communities. She leads and contributes to multidisciplinary projects aimed at developing sustainable aquaculture practices and innovative monitoring tools.

Jeff Ross

Jeff is the man who keeps us all on track and oversees all our research projects. Contact Jeff if you would like to understand more about interactions between aquaculture and soft sediment environments.

Nigel Keeley

Nigel is a benthic ecologist with broad experience researching, monitoring and managing ecological effects from sea-based aquaculture installations. Specialties include optimisation and advancement of monitoring tools and developing indicators including applications of eDNA. Contact Nigel for issues relating to the environmental footprint of finfish aquaculture.

Riana Bell

Riana is part of our laboratory and field teams, providing support across a number of projects. Her Honours work investigated nutrient uptake dynamics of three Tasmanian seaweeds co-cultured in proximity to marine finfish aquaculture, using a stable isotope analysis approach. Riana is one of our in-house report editors and looks after our website. Contact Riana if you have any website-related questions or would like help accessing our publications and information.

Sam Lemm

Sam is a marine ecologist specialising in rocky reef data collection, using his expertise as a diver and vessel coxswain to conduct research in diverse marine environments. He applies advanced field techniques to monitor ecosystems, supporting sustainable marine management. Contact Sam for expertise in marine field data collection and ecosystem monitoring.

Scott Hadley

Scott is a biogeochemical modeller. His work involves developing and applying models to investigate interactions between aquaculture and the marine environment. Scott has extensive experience in numerical modelling, dynamical systems analysis and more recently in statistical modelling and machine learning. Contact Scott if you are interested to find out more about modelling in this challenging environment.

Students

Amber Senysyn

Amber is a Master’s student studying disease risk in bull kelp (Durvillaea potatorum) aquaculture in Tasmania. Her research investigates the microbiome and surface communities of wild and farmed bull kelp to understand how environmental factors and disease affect their health. Contact Amber if you would like to know more about bull kelp disease ecology and biosecurity in aquaculture.

James (Jimmy) Hortle

Jimmy is a PhD student and Junior Research Fellow exploring artificial oxygenation as a remediation tool in coastal systems. His research focuses on ecosystem responses across ecology and biogeochemistry, with a background in using benthic communities to assess aquaculture impacts. Contact Jimmy for information on oxygenation trials and benthic monitoring.

Robin Cappaert

Robin is a PhD student who studies biofouling communities associated with offshore salmon aquaculture in southeast Tasmania. He is interested in how these communities can be effectively monitored in a real-time and semi-automated way. Contact Robin if you want to learn more about image collection and processing.

our Team

Meet the people working to make a difference

Staff

Students

Aquaculture Environment Team

Use this form to get in touch