Ruth Thurstan
Former Research Fellow
University of Queensland
ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
James Cook University Townsville
Queensland 4811 Australia
Phone: 61 7 4781 4000
Email: info@coralcoe.org.au
Former Research Fellow
University of Queensland
I grew up in the Peak District in the UK, many miles from the sea. I graduated from Liverpool University with a BSc (Hons) in Marine Biology in 2004, and completed an MSc in Marine Environmental Management at York University in 2007. I continued at York to complete her PhD on shifting baselines and the impact of industrial fishing on the UK marine environment in June 2011. I have recently started my post doctoral fellowship at the University of Queensland and plans to investigate the history of exploitation of Australian fisheries and marine mega-fauna.
My research focuses upon changes to the marine environment during the last 150 years as a result of human drivers. Data sources used include archival information such as newspaper articles, government reports and catch data and oral histories to gather resource-users perceptions of changes to catch rates, locations fished and species abundance over time. My research is currently centred along the Queensland coast, with a particular emphasis upon commercially targeted species such as pink snapper (Pagrus auratus). I hope to improve resource-users and governments knowledge of long-term patterns over time, in order to reduce uncertainty for future management. I am a member of Prof John Pandolfi’s Lab.
An international group of scientists is predicting markedly different outcomes for different species of coral reef fishes under climate change – and have made substantial progress on picking the ‘
New research has found as climate change causes the world’s oceans to warm, baby sharks are born smaller, exhausted, undernourished and into environments that are already difficult for them to survi
A new study shows the coastal protection coral reefs currently provide will start eroding by the end of the century, as the world continues to warm and the oceans acidify. A team of researchers led
A team of scientists led by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE) won one of the nation’s top science awards at tonight’s ‘Oscars of Australian science’, the Eureka P
Abstract: It is a little over a decade since research commenced into the effects of anthropogenic ocean acidification on marine fishes. In that time, we have learned that projected end-of-century
Abstract: Increased uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere has caused the world’s ocean to become more acidic. Different marine habitats are known to have varying ranges of CO2 across mul
Abstract: The Allen Coral Atlas (http://allencoralatlas.org) partnership uses high-resolution satellite imagery, machine learning, and field data to map and monitor the world’s coral reefs at unp
Abstract: Climate change is causing the average surface temperature of the oceans to rise and increasing the frequency and intensity of marine heatwaves. In addition, absorption of additional CO2
Abstract: Marine environments are a concealing medium, where observations of natural fish behavior are challenging. In particular, the geographic and depth distributions of migratory top predators ar
Abstract: Invasive species management can be the the subject of debate in many countries due to conflicting ecological, ethical, economic, and social reasons, especially when dealing with a species s
Abstract: Ocean acidification, the increase in seawater CO2 with all its associated consequences, is relatively well understood in open oceans. In shelf seas such as the Great Barrier Reef, processe
Abstract: The backdrop of legends and movies, the deep sea has always been unfathomable because we had no idea what existed there. Once thought to be barren of life, we now know this couldn’t be
ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
James Cook University Townsville
Queensland 4811 Australia
Phone: 61 7 4781 4000
Email: info@coralcoe.org.au