Latest Sean Connolly Stories

Jobs, livelihoods and ecotourism industries can benefit from having a diverse supply of weed-eating fish on the world’s coral reefs, marine researchers say. Despite their small size, relative to the sharks, whales, and turtles that often get more attention, herbivorous fish play a vital role in maintaining the health of coral reefs, which support the livelihoods of 500 million people worldwide, say researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook...

Sharks are in big trouble on the Great Barrier Reef and worldwide, according to an Australian-based team who have developed a world-first way to measure rates of decline in shark populations. “There is mounting evidence of widespread, substantial, and ongoing declines in the abundance of shark populations worldwide, coincident with marked rises in global shark catches in the last half-century,” say Mizue Hisano, Professor Sean Connolly and Dr William Robbins from the ARC Centre of...

The key to preserving the extraordinary richness and beauty of the world's coral reefs through the coming period of fragmentation caused by climate change lies in a better understanding of how newborn coral larvae disperse across the oceans to settle and grow on new reefs.Research by scientists at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies is throwing new light on the survival and settlement rates of larvae from different coral species, as a basis for predicting how fast coral...