August 1995 Newsletter

CHURCHILL FELLOWSHIP FOR ROB COLES

Cairns-based fisheries scientist Dr Rob Coles has been awarded a Churchill Fellowship to study coastal management issues overseas.

A Principal Scientist at Northern Fisheries Centre, Rob will spend nine weeks in Micronesia, The Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and India next year studying the impacts on tropical marine vegetation, such as mangroves and seagrasses, of coastal tourist development, aquaculture pond development and increased human population density on coastal plains.

Rob decided to apply for the travel fellowship, which has been sponsored by the Townsville-based James Love Charitable Trust, after being involved in coastal environmental issues on the North Queensland coast.

"This fellowship will take me to countries with far worse environmental problems than Queensland to study methods of resolving coastal management issues," he explained.

"The effects of our developments on mangroves and seagrasses are little studied in tropical Australia. Central south East Asia and Micronesia are far further progressed than northern Australia down the development, problem and rehabilitation cycle."

In nearly 12 years with the Department, Rob has built up a research team specialising in seagrass research and coastal habitat management. He is also a project leader for the Cooperative Reef Research Centre and is committed to finding long-term solutions for ecologically sustainable coastal management.

"In particular, I am interested in the planning process, inter-government agreements and legislative approaches. In the next five years we are committed to developing our own fisheries and coastal management plans, yet we do not yet have enough history or sufficient examples in north eastern Australia to study these problems here," he said.

"It is important that we learn from experience elsewhere and avoid making expensive mistakes."

page top | contents | next page