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Discovery - Virtual tours of the underwater world
Many renowned marine scientists from Australia and New Zealand were aboard the Tangaroa on the NORFANZ voyage. Read all about them here.
Sampling gear expert; vessel systems; general fish taxonomy. Neil has 22 years experience with trawl surveys (from inshore to deepwater), including survey design and data collection and analysis. He has lead many of surveys, and has extensive experience designing and operating a range of fishing gear.
Penny is the Collection Manager for Marine Invertebrates and Head of the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the Australian Museum. She has extensive field experience in collecting marine invertebrates. Her research interest is amphipod (small crustaceans) systematics and at present is describing the Australian cerapodine fauna. She established and maintains the marine invertebrate database at the Australian Museum.
New Zealand voyage leader; NORFANZ science committee member; deep sea fish and seamount ecology specialist Malcolm is a Principal Scientist (Deepwater Fisheries) at NIWA in Wellington, New Zealand. Malcolm leads a science team carrying out stock assessment research on deepwater commercial species, including orange roughy, oreos, and cardinalfish. He has designed and led many surveys to measure fish abundance, and has completed stock assessment modelling for a range of fisheries. Malcolm also has a special interest in the ecology of seamounts and the effects of fishing on seamount fauna and habitat.
Karen is a recognized expert in the identification and classification of benthic invertebrate animals, particularly molluscs, and is an internationally recognized expert on chitons (a class of molluscs). She has been pursuing underwater photography professionally since 1991, specializing in macro-photography, particularly invertebrates, but also plants and benthic fishes. Via painstaking collection of specimens and working closely with other experts in the field, Karen's catalogue of marine photographs are accurately identified down to species where possible, and covers all macro marine invertebrate phyla.
Australia's voyage leader and NORFANZ committee member for leg 2 of the Voyage. Peter Last is a fish taxonomist with CSIRO Division of Marine Research. Peter specialises in biogeography of elasmobranchs and deep water fishes.
Mark is the fish collection manager at the Australian Museum. He has worked for over 20 years on different groups of fishes and in particular the deep sea spiny flatheads (family Hoplichthyidae). Mark manages the museum's fish database and in recent years has become increasingly involved with disseminating "fishy information" via the Australian Museum's fish website, www.amonline.net.au/fishes.
Echinoderm specialist; general invertebrate collections. Don is studying the ecology and distribution of marine benthos. He specialises in the study of echinoderms, and is a member of the Society of Echinodermologists.
Shift leader; macrourid (rattail) fish specialist, Peter has an MSc (Hons) from Victoria University in Zoology, and specialises in fisheries biology and fish taxonomy. Peter's research includes studying the black and smooth oreo (e.g., estimating age and productivity), and assisting with the design and carrying out of trawl surveys to measure fish abundance.
Mark Norman is a Senior Curator at Museum Victoria. He studies the diversity, behaviours and biology of octopuses, squids, cuttlefishes and nautiluses (the cephalopods). His main research focus has been defining the Australian and Indo-West Pacific cephalopod fauna, primarily the octopuses. In collaboration with Dr Eric Hochberg of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, he has discovered more than 150 new species of octopus. Research interests include systematics, reproductive and defense behaviours, and morphological adaptations to key habitats and niches. He has also undertaken research into other marine invertebrates and Victorian fishes. He has published Australasian and world field guides on cephalopods. Mark will be providing a diary service for the second half of the NORFANZ voyage.
Dr. Tim O'Hara is a senior curator of marine invertebrates at Museum Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. His main interests are in the biogeography and ecology of marine organisms, understanding why animals live where they do. This data is required by Australian Governments in order to effectively protect and manage our marine environment. His favourite marine animals are echinoderms (sea stars, brittle stars, sea urchins etc). On the NORFANZ expedition, Tim will assist in the sorting, preliminary identification and preservation of invertebrates as they are brought onto the trawl deck. The real work for Tim will begin back at the Museum after the cruise finishes, when thousands of small brittle stars will be examined under the microscope and identified to species.
John is a specialist on the taxonomy, anatomy, and biology of deep sea fishes. John was a researcher in the Ichthyology Section of the Australian Museum for 30 years before semi-retirement 5 years ago. He has been on collecting cruises in many parts of the world and is especially interested in fishes from below 1000 metres.
Clive graduated with B.Sc. Hons. from Queen's University of Belfast and emigrated to New Zealand in 1979. After completing his doctoral thesis on the systematics of hapuku and bass at Victoria University of Wellington in 1986, he joined the National Museum of New Zealand as a Visiting Researcher. In 1989 he took up a research fellowship to study the phylogenetic significance of fine structure of fish scales at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, USA. He returned to the National Museum of New Zealand to the position of Ichthyologist and subsequently Curator of Fishes at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. For recreation Clive goes fishing - he is equally happy angling in lakes, rivers and the ocean. Clive is the programme leader and will be providing a diary service for the first half of the voyage.
Andrew is the Collection Manager: Fishes, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and has participated in several deep-water fisheries research cruises, as well as coastal field work conducted by the Department of Conservation. He currently holds a NAUI Divemaster ticket and acts as divemaster for SCUBA surveys undertaken by the Museum of New Zealand's Fish Department.
Rick is the Collection Manager, Marine Invertebrates, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Rick's research interests are the taxonomy of decapod larvae and shrimps and prawns in particular, and crabs and lobsters in general. Rick has focused on the larval development of slipper lobsters and also published papers on the larvae and adults of rock lobsters (crayfish) of New Zealand and overseas.
Alan Williams is a fishery ecologist with research interests in the ecology and structure of deep sea communities and habitats. He has been involved in many surveys off Australia and New Zealand and has published research papers on the structure of benthic and mesopelagic fish communities around Australia, the types, distributions and uses of continental shelf and slope benthic habitats, and the taxonomy of deep sea fishes. Alan is enthusiastic about the development and use of camera systems to record aspects of habitats and biology, and will use a system built at CSIRO to film the seamounts sampled on this voyage.
