Robert Harcourt

Biography

I started snorkelling at age four and knew right there and then I wanted to be a marine biologist. I was an undergraduate at Adelaide University and was lucky enough to be awarded a place at Cambridge in England for my PhD. For my PhD thesis I got to go to Peru for two fantastic years to study South American fur seals. While I was there we had a severe El Niño year with a massive mortality for many marine predators including seals. Witnessing this overwhelming influence of El Niño on the otherwise highly productive Peruvian marine ecosystem first hand, left me with a deep impression of the importance of focussing on environmental variability if we are to understand natural systems and the strategies animals have evolved to cope with them. After Cambridge I worked in Scotland, the USA and Mexico with seals, dolphins and whales, then onto a postdoc at the University of Otago in New Zealand on New Zealand fur seals and Adelie penguins. I came back to Australia 15 years ago and set up what was the Marine Mammal Research Group- now the Marine Predator Research group, where I have worked and continue to work with some great people on a whole range of marine wildlife. In my spare time I am a keen bodysurfer, kayaker and scuba diver and dedicated underwater photographer. I am also learning to ride a longboard, slowly....

Research Interest

Animal Behaviour and Ecology My main interests revolve around the importance of individual variation in behaviour to foraging, communication, mating tactics and life experience. Recently much of my research has focused on individual differences and evolutionary mechanisms, combining observation and experimental manipulation of behaviour in the field with genetic methods. My second major thrust has been the use of technology to 'open a window' into the world of large marine predators. We were the first team to successfully deploy satellite transmitters on otariid seals and wintering Adelie penguins and have developed methods of measuring and interpreting dive data in two and three dimensions. This research has helped transform our understanding of how warm-blooded animals cope with environmental extremes as they forage and breed in the marine environment. Since 2006 I have been Facility Leader for the Australian Animal Tagging and Monitoring System (AATAMS) a national initiative to observe large marine life, see http://imos.org.au/aatams.html. Biological Conservation Members of the MMRG have made valuable contributions to conservation of large marine vertebrates including sharks, seals, and whales. A small sample of recent work includes conservation of grey nurse and wobbegong sharks, managing human impacts and disturbance on wildlife, whale and dolphin stock structure. Apart from academic output we directly contribute to conservation in a hands-on fashion. We have drafted species recovery plans for the Federal Government, provided expert comment to many groups including state and federal government, NGOs and the United Nations Environment Program, made Expert Witness appearances in court, sat on Ecological Risk Assessment Technical panels and authored public submissions.