What We Do

The F&F Lab doesn't just do research, we also teach university classes in fisheries and conservation, we supervise Masters and Ph.D. students, we collaborate with and support projects through the SE Asia and Pacific region, and we communicate. This means we actively seek ways to get our science 'out there' when we can, and we participate in community events. Our key activity areas include:

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• Life history and demography of sharks, rays, and fishes, for fisheries management and conservation (e.g. conservation biology of sawfishes, river sharks, and wedgefishes in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia; life history of small coastal sharks and rays traded in SEA fish markets; shark fisheries in West Bengal, India)

• Practical fisheries science and conservation projects (e.g. reducing bycatch of sharks, turtles, and dugongs in net fisheries in the Great Barrier Reef)

• Capacity building and collaboration with regional partners (e.g. shark and ray capacity building workshop in Singapore)

• The ecological connections between sharks, rays, and fishes, and marine ecosystems (e.g. stingray ecology in coastal habitats of the Great Barrier Reef)

• Community and industry-driven, inter-disciplinary research that integrates social, cultural, economic, and environmental dimensions of fisheries (e.g. river mussel research with the Yuku Baja Muliku community in Cape York; preliminary exploration of shark depredation on fish catches in Queensland; exploring community and tourism dimensions of shark bite incidents)

• Profiling the diversity and condition of sharks and rays across the Pacific (the Shark Search Indo-Pacific programme)

• Citizen science approaches to shark and ray research (e.g. working with SCUBA divers and reef tourism guides to document rare species and behaviours) 

• Information syntheses and critical analyses to inform managers and conservation practitioners (e.g. the scientific bases for shark safety messaging; a critical analysis of the way shark and ray tourism is managed; critical analysis of science underpinning narratives about the ecological roles of sharks and rays)