Director

Richard has over 15 years’ experience, specialising in benthic ecology, ecosystem functioning, blue carbon ecosystems, cumulative effects assessment, and nature‑based solutions. Richard has led or co‑led major programmes including Sustainable Seas National Science Challenge projects on improving cumulative effects and restoration, and national and international blue carbon initiatives with MBIE, the Ministry for the Environment, The Nature Conservancy, and Conservation International. He also brings extensive experience working with iwi/hapū on coastal management and providing expert ecological evidence in consent hearings. He is actively involved in supporting ecological restoration actions, both coastal (e.g. mussel restoration in Ohiwa harbour, kina barren management in Northland) and land (e.g. supporting wetland restoration in low lying degraded farm lands in Whangarei and Bay of Plenty). Richard is an investigator on an MBIE Endeavour fund project developing novel AI solutions to improve wind farm consenting, and co-founder and director of Shoal AI, which specialises in the development of AI tools to support environmental decision making.

Principal Scientist

Judi is an Honorary Professor (University of Auckland’s Institute of Marine Science), with over 30 years’ experience in coastal and estuarine ecology, statistical ecology, and long‑term monitoring. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand and recipient of the New Zealand Marine Sciences Society Award for her "significant contribution to the understanding of the role of scale in ecology and using advanced statistics to address challenging ecological questions". Judi’s research addresses fundamental questions in marine ecology through innovative statistical approaches, designing robust monitoring programmes, and bridging the science-management interface. Her work includes long-term time-series analysis of climatic, oceanic, freshwater, and local environmental drivers on macrobenthic communities, and co-developing the New Zealand Trait Database for shallow-water marine benthic invertebrates. She has extensive Sustainable Seas experience, on the science leadership team and contributing to multiple projects on cumulative effects, ecosystem functioning, and risk assessment for ecosystem-based management.

Coastal Modeller

Zhanchao is a postdoctoral researcher with expertise in remote sensing, hydrodynamic modeling, and machine learning. His research is dedicated to monitoring estuarine health and sediment transport through satellite data and numerical models. Zhanchao is particularly interested in applying machine learning techniques to simulate the potential impacts of sea level rise and climate change on the coastal environments of Aotearoa New Zealand.

Post doctoral fellow

Timothy is a research scholar in marine science with a focus on anthropogenic effects on coastal ecosystems. He uses ecological theory, together with biogeochemical, molecular, and advanced statistical tools, to understand the multifaceted interactions of ecosystem components at the dynamic land-to-sea interface. He has a strong focus on field-based approaches including manipulative field experiments and extended gradient sampling designs, to test relationships across location specific phenomena.  Notable advances of his young career include: 1) identification of key stressors of human land-use intensification across regional gradients and their effects on carbon cycling in mangrove forests, 2) the description of biogeographic dynamics of microbial communities in mangrove forests, and 3) contributions to our understanding of coral settlement after anthropogenic disturbances.