Speaker Spotlight #3
by Jillian Browning • April 2, 2015 • Announcements, Education, Events • 0 Comments
In the lead up to our Annual Marine Science Forum on the 2nd and 3rd of May, we will feature a post about each of the scientists presenting this year.
This week we would like to introduce you to:
Professor of Marine Ecology, University of Technology, Sydney
Forum presentation: Invaders from the North: 15 years of monitoring tropical fishes on the Sapphire Coast
Every summer as waters warm and the EAC strengthens, over 30 species of colourful coral-reef fish appear on the Sapphire coast. Our long-term research here and further north has shown that these fish disperse up to 1000s of kilometres from the Great Barrier Reef, and I will describe patterns for a range of butterflyfishes, damselfishes and surgeonfishes. The main barrier to their establishment in southern NSW is that they require winter temperatures to stay above 18C. We predict that, under climate change, this “overwintering threshold” wont be exceeded until late this century on the Sapphire Coast.
Bio
David Booth is Professor of Marine Ecology and Director of the Centre for Environmental Sustainability at UTS, and President of the Australian Coral Reef Society. He has published over 90 papers in reef-fish ecology, climate change and other anthropogenic impacts on fishes and fisheries, in the Caribbean, Hawaii, Great Barrier Reef, and studies how tropical fish travel down the East Australian Current past Sydney. He researches fishes in estuaries around Sydney, the ecology and behaviour of threatened fishes such as seadragons, black cod and white sharks and the ecology of the deep sea.