We are very excited that our CMS Director, Prof Gretta Pecl has been nominated as a finalist for the 2022 Tasmanian Australian of the Year Award for her pioneering work establishing the Redmap program. The awards will be announced in Hobart on 29th October. We wish you all the best Gretta!

We are very proud of our CMS Director Prof Gretta Pecl, who has been awarded the 2021 K. Radway Allen Award by the Australian Society for Fish Biology (ASFB) for her outstanding contributions to the field of fisheries science. Huge Congratulations Gretta!!

The award, which is the most prestigious honour given by the ASFB, recognises Professor Pecl’s broad interdisciplinary research interests, with more than 150 published papers to her name in the marine and fisheries research space.

PhD student Katie Marx is a finalist in the 3-minute thesis (3MT) presentations!

You can have a look at the 2021 finalists' presentations here

Katie is studying the connection of gateway citizens with Antarctica.

Prof Gretta Pecl opened the Climate Week at Huonville High, organised by their Zayed Sustainability Team. Prof Pecl talked about how the IPCC process worked and then made bike powered donuts!

These amazing youth leaders have a whole week of climate action activities planned!

Prof Catriona MacLeod will be presenting at this event about "Local climate impacts and solutions".

Find more information about the event in the poster below.

CMS member Dean Greeno was interviewed by ABC radio Hobart about the Future Seas project, the Indigenous Peoples piece, and the importance of empowering the voices and agency of Indigenous Peoples: "What role does Indigenous knowledge play in observing and reversing climate change?"

Listen interview here

Sincere congratulations to Prof Julia Blanchard for her successful ARC Future Fellowship application with the project "Bridging the land–sea divide to ensure food security under climate change"!!

This project aims to comprehensively evaluate ocean-based food solutions to meet food security needs under climate change. It will resolve a critical blind spot in current plans that isolate land and sea food systems and neglect their interdependencies. Combining global models and data, it will assess the constraints of ocean-based food solutions by anticipating and accounting for land-sea links including: agricultural runoff, shared feed resources for farmed animals, and trade-offs for biodiversity and climate mitigation. It will deliver a major leap in our capacity to undertake holistic ecosystem assessment of future food production pathways. Benefits will include integrated food–biodiversity–climate policies for Australia and the world.

Prof Gretta Pecl was a panellist at the roundtable discussion session on "Marine environment and marine ecology protection, marine sustainable development".

The online symposium was attended by more than 10,000 people along the day.

About the event:

The first "China-Japan High-level Expert Symposium on Marine Environment " focused on recent advances in the fields of marine environment and resources , providing a platform for dialogues on the future of research related to climate change, marine environmental monitoring, marine ecological restoration, microbial carbon, marine microplastics and sustainable development of marine fishery.
The purpose of the symposium was to strengthen the cooperation and exchanges between China and Japan in marine environment research, and to gather talent that will lead the future development of the fields. Furthermore, the symposium aimed to make vital contributions to developing innovative solutions for marine environment challenges worldwide.

Organisers:
Foreign Talent Research Center, Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China
Ocean University of China

Chairs:
Jiao Nianzhi, Professor of Cheung Kong Scholar, Xiamen University, Academician of Chinese Academy of Science
Tian Yongjun, Professor of College of Fisheries, Ocean University of China (OUC), the Leader of the Lab of Fisheries Oceanography in OUC
Ito Shin-ichi, Professor of Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, The University of Tokyo

Hosts:
Department of Foreign Expert Services, Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China
Sakura Science Program Headquarters, Japan Science and Technology Agency

On May 7 2021, Scott Bennett (CMS, IMAS) hosted a public webinar and Q&A entitled “Forests of gold: uncovering the value of Australia’s Great Southern Reef” as part of the Seaweed Forests Festival, a month-long event bringing together art, science and community to celebrate Australia’s underwater forests.
The panel for the webinar included Assoc Prof Adriana Verges (UNSW and the Sydney Institute of Marine Science), Dr Melinda Coleman (Principal Research Scientist Department of Primary Industries NSW), Stephen Bunney (Commercial Abalone Diver, from NSW), Dr Abbie Rogers (Co-director of Centre for Environmental Economics & Policy and UWA Oceans Institute, UWA) and Prof Thomas Wernberg (UWA Oceans Institute & School of Biological Sciences, UWA).
The webinar was an interactive discussion between panellists and audience about the Great Southern Reef. What is it? Why is it important? How does it benefit Australia? What challenges does it face? What opportunities does it offer?

The webinar was targeted at state management agencies, policy makers and stakeholders of the Great Southern Reef from around Australia to raise awareness of the importance and interconnectedness of the reef. The webinar had 129 online viewers.
Link to the webinar recording can be found at : www.greatsouthernreef.com/webinar
Clip played at the beginning of the webinar introducing the GSR can be found here: https://youtu.be/LMgXuG_xu5g
Link to the Seaweed Forest festival: https://www.seaweedforestsfestival.com/

_{^{*Image credit: IMAS}}

CMS supported the Ocean Visions 2021 Summit held on the 18 – 21 of May. The summit involved 5 campuses around the world, including Hobart. The Summit was a huge success with more than 2300 registered attendees from almost 80 countries gathering to work on ocean solutions.

Two in-person discussion panels were held in Hobart which were organised by our CMS Director Prof Gretta Pecl, CMS members Dr Valeriya Komyakova and Dr Maree Fudge, and Dr Karen Evans from CSIRO.

Also, several CMS members presented in a variety of online sessions:

Dr Kirsty Nash was a keynote speaker at the Healthy Ocean- Healthy People session and presented Roadmaps for Healthy Ocean & People, with CMS Director Prof Gretta Pecl as one of the moderators. If you are interested in Kirsty's talk, you can watch it here.

Dr Maree Fudge was part of the ECR panel on Pathways and partnerships for action as part of the same session.

Prof Marcus Haward presented at the session about political sciences and ocean governance to support a marine circular economy .

Dr Valeriya Komyakova presented in one of the Early Career Researchers sessions about green marine engineering.