People

Patrick is a Canadian postdoctoral research fellow with the CoE for Coral Reef Studies and WorldFish and a National Geographic Early Career Leader. His work focuses on the impacts of local marine management, particularly in the South Pacific. He is also interested in identifying optimal management strategies to balance both biodiversity conservation and sustainable use.

Previously, he completed his PhD through James Cook University with a focus on the coral reef ecosystems of the Kingdom of Tonga. From 2016-2019, Patrick collaborated with the Tongan government and Ministry of Fisheries to design and implement a national reef monitoring program to understand the current ecological status of the countries coral reefs and reef fish fishery. In addition, his PhD research focused on assessing the impacts of community based fisheries management. This involved using counterfactual framing to look back at the difference made by existing management areas, as well as using predictive techniques to assess potential future impacts of management. His PhD research was supervised by Geoff Jones, Tom Bridge, Bob Pressey and Georgina Gurney.

Working in collaboration with NASA, he also led research examining the resilience of coral reef ecosystems after a massive submarine volcanic eruption created the newest landmass on Earth, located in the remote outer waters of Tonga.

Google Scholar

Smallhorn-West P., Sheehan J., Rodriguez-Troncoso A., Malimali S., Halafihi T., Mailau S., Le’ota A., Ceccarelli D., Stone K., Pressey B., Jones G. (2020) Kingdom of Tonga Special Management Area report 2020. 86 p. http://purl.org/spc/digilib/doc/iwyna

Smallhorn-West, P., Sheehan J, Stone K, Malimali S, Halafihi H, Bridge T, Pressey B, Jones G (2020) Incentivizing co-management for impact: mechanisms driving the successful national expansion of Tonga’s Special Management Area program. Conservation Letters e12742

Smallhorn-West, P., Gordon S, Dempsey A, Purkis S, Malimali S, Halafihi T, Southgate P, Bridge T, Pressey B, Jones G (2020) Tongan socio-environmental spatial layers for marine ecosystem management. Pacific conservation biology https://doi.org/10.1071/PC19032

Smallhorn-West P, Garvin J, Slayback D, DeCarlo T, Gordon S, Fitzgerald S, Halafihi T, Jones G, Bridge T (2019) Coral reef annihilation, persistence and recovery at Earth’s youngest volcanic island. Coral reefs

Smallhorn-West P, Weeks R, Gurney G, Pressey B (2019) Ecological and socioeconomic impacts of marine protected areas in the South Pacific: assessing the evidence base. Biodiversity and conservation

Smallhorn-West, P, (2019) Progress towards conserving Tonga’s coral reefs. SPC Fisheries Bulletin

Darling et al. (2019) Socio-environmental drivers inform strategic management of coral reefs in the Anthropocene. Nature ecology and evolution. 10.1038/s41559-019-0953-8

Smallhorn-West P, Bridge T, Malimali S, Pressey R, Jones G. (2019) Predicting impact to determine the efficacy of community-based marine reserve design. Conservation letters. DOI: 10.1111/conl.12602

Smallhorn-West P, Govan H (2018) Towards reducing misrepresentation of national achievements in marine protected area targets. Marine policy 97, 127-129

Smallhorn-West, P., Bridge, T., Munday, P. & Jones, G (2017) Habitat quality constrains the depth-distribution and growth rate of a coral-associated reef fish. Marine Ecological Progress Series.

Smallhorn-West, P., Bridge, T., Munday, P. & Jones, G (2016) Depth distribution and abundance of a coral-associated reef fish: roles of recruitment and post-recruitment processes. Coral Reefs. DOI 10.1007/s00338-016-1509-x