Yesterday, in the wake of the banning of the super trawler, Australia’s Nobel Prize winner Brian Schmidt called for a more scientific approach to policy. He pointed out that in Britain, science is embedded…
- Associate Professor, Department of Ecology, Environment and Evolution, La Trobe University
The report in this morning’s paper about complaints to the Fisheries Minister by members of the group that set the quotas for the small pelagic fishery highlights the challenges of setting fishing quotas…
Super trawler the Abel Tasman (formerly the Margiris) will be blocked from fishing in Australian waters for up to two years after the Federal Government announced plans to amend legislation to address…
Our Federal Environmental Minister has stepped up to the plate. He has exercised every legal avenue open to him to regulate the super trawler currently known as the Margiris when it begins fishing in Australian…
A reader complained that my last column about the environmental damage caused by super trawlers was too emotive. We agreed about the facts, but not about how to frame them. I tried to ignore this comment…
Protests on the weekend in Hobart against the Dutch owned super trawler, the FV Margiris, have led to the Australian environment minister, Tony Burke, expressing some concerns. Greenpeace’s petition against…
The WCPFC (Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission) is meeting this week in Korea in an attempt to regulate the world’s largest tuna fishery. An earlier attempt in March this year failed to get…
Lonesome George was a giant tortoise, the last of his species, and he died this week, on Sunday (24 June). I wrote about his death and made everyone sad in a recent post. George was found living alone…
Lonesome George, a Galapagos Giant tortoise, died a few days ago. He was the last individual of the species Chelonoidis nigra abingdon, or the Pinta Giant Tortoise, so his demise is also an extinction…
Two men walk into a bar. The first man says “I would like a glass of H2O.” The second man says “I would like a glass of H2O too.” It’s funny because H2O2 is the chemical name for hydrogen peroxide, and…
The Australian government today has announced a series of marine reserves that will make Australia a world leader in ocean protection. The reserves will cover over 3 million square kilometres, or nearly…
I began writing a series on sex cells when I heard about hammerhead sharks giving birth without the benefit of a male. This type of reproduction is called parthenogenesis, and I tried to explain it, in…
I have recently learnt that human sperm don’t swim, they crawl. Who knew? This actually makes sense, once you think about it, despite all the videos and cartoons that depict sperm swimming. Our internal…
Today is the International Day Against Homophobia. Actually, it is the evening of IDAH and I am trying to understand why anyone would be For Homophobia. I keep thinking about a suggestion I heard on the…
We have had an exciting birth in our household. A stick insect hatched! My husband Geoff is a teacher who has been lucky enough to participate in a program with the Melbourne Zoo to rescue an endangered…
In my first year biology lectures I have a ritual that my students seem to enjoy. I put a quote of the day up on the overhead projector; something for the students to reflect on while they find their seats…
The proposed Murray-Darling Basin Plan has been one of the most controversial pieces of public policy in Australia’s recent history. There has been the predictable divide between irrigators calling for…
As good news stories goes, this is one of the best. Mountain pygmy possums are one of the most critically endangered species in Australia, and possibly the cutest. The recent genetic rescue of the Mt…
In a recent post, I was hopeful that a meeting in Guam would take steps to protect the tuna fishery in the Pacific. Unfortunately, the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission ignored the advice…
I recently wrote about virgin birth in hammerhead sharks where I tried to explain parthenogenesis, a process at the level of the sex cells which allows females to produce offspring without the benefit…
I was listening to Triple J on Tuesday afternoon when comedian David O’Doherty shared what he called a show stopping fact: female hammerhead sharks can produce baby hammerhead sharks without the benefit…
Fifty percent of the world’s tuna is caught in the Western and Central Pacific region. Today, a meeting in Guam will determine if this fishery will become more sustainable or continue to harm endangered…
A recent paper in Nature Geoscience has proposed that when the first simple plants moved onto land, they fundamentally changed the atmosphere by accelerating the weathering of rocks. The time: the late…
Here’s a scene that might be familiar: it’s an invitingly sunny day yet, infuriatingly, the kids remain sprawled, skinny and listless, on the couch. They’re peering into tiny Nintendo machines and every…
The NHMRC’s new Australian dietary guidelines recommend eating more fruits, vegetables, legumes, beans and wholegrains and eating fewer starchy vegetables, refined cereals, red meat (unless you are a young…
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