Unravelling the mysteries of marine larval dispersal: where we’ve been and where we’re going

Professor Geoffrey P Jones

College of Marine & Environmental Sciences and ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies

Geoff Jones is one of the world’s most influential authors in the fields of coral reef ecology and marine conservation biology, with ~230 publications in peer-reviewed journals and books. Geoff graduated with a PhD from the University of Auckland in 1981 and he is currently a Professor in the College of Marine and Environmental Sciences at James Cook University and a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. He has worked extensively on both temperate and tropical reefs in New Zealand, Australia, the South Pacific and Papua New Guinea. His special interests are in the processes determining the structure and dynamics of reef fish populations, and strategies to reduce human impacts on threatened fish species. In 1995, he began to develop new approaches to determine the fate of reef fish larvae, which until that time had remained a mystery. Geoff and collaborators were the first to tag and recapture marine fish larvae. He has since become a world leader in the field of marine population connectivity and its implications for the ecology, conservation and management of reef fish populations. His talk at AMSA will provide a historical overview of milestones in the search to discover how far and in what direction marine larvae disperse. He will highlight recent advances in the understanding of local population connectivity and the benefits of marine reserve networks for reef fish conservation and sustainable harvesting. Finally, he will look ahead to anticipate where this field will go in the next decade.