Enthusing and informing Australians about marine science.

On Wednesday 9^th March over 50 SIMS supporters made their way to Chowder Bay to attend a special “Spotlight on Marine Science “ lecture hosted by the Sydney Institute of Marine Science in celebration of National Seaweek 2011.

The audience was treated to an evening of engaging and motivating presentations from three of Australia’s prominent marine scientists.

Who could not have been entertained by a presentation entitled the “Flower Pot Project”, delivered by Associate Professor Ross Coleman, which focussed on the innovative solutions being applied in an attempt to recreate rock pool habitats lost with the construction of artificial seawalls around Sydney Harbour.  Ross is a specialist in the field of urbanisation and its impacts on the marine environment – a theme very relevant to our unique harbour and to our research at SIMS.

Professor Bill Gladstone captured the immediate attention of the audience with his title page – “Sex and the Sea”. Bill’s presentation included some incredible video footage of a male “yellowmargin triggerfish” furtively preparing the seabed nursery while his potential female partner drifted about inspecting the preparations.

Bill focused his speech on fish reproduction in three geographical zones, being the Great Barrier Reef, Port Stephens and the great white juvenile “playzone” there, and also Farason Islands in the Red Sea where Bill worked for some years. The annual fish reproduction cycle in the Farason Islands is key to an age old cultural ritual where each year the local people await the arrival of the fish, and the subsequent harvest . Hence the conservation zone implemented at the Islands recognised the rights of locals to harvest from the zone during the fish reproduction phase, but not outsiders. Professor Gladstone is based at the University of Technology Sydney and is focused on fish reproductive ecology and its application in Marine Conservation.

The final “spotlight” fell on Dr Moninya Roughan as she described the Institute’s role in managing the NSW node of what is a collaborative national program called the “Integrated Marine Observing System” (IMOS). The IMOS program deploys sophisticated equipment in our oceans, some fixed to the sea floor, some literally gliding through the waters.  The data collected from the varied equipment is delivering information from our seas that has never before been available, and advancing enormously the scientific community’s knowledge of the movements of marine life, and the habitats they depend on.