Professor Peter Mumby
Lead Scientist
Bio
Professor Peter J. Mumby is an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow (ARC), leader of the Marine Spatial Ecology Lab, at the University of Queensland. He received his B.Sc. (Hons.) degree in Marine Biology from the University of Liverpool (UK) in 1992, and the PhD degree from the University of Sheffield (UK) in 1997.
Prof. Mumby is renowned for advancing the understanding of ecological processes of coral reefs, developing ecosystem models to investigate the effectiveness of conservation measures in mitigating disturbances (including climate change), and combining ecological models with remotely-sensed data to allow spatial conservation planning.
Prof. Mumby’s work has focused on providing solutions to coral reef management problems. His research has spanned various applied problems including the impact of losing mangroves on Caribbean reef fish populations and coral reef resilience. His work also provided the first evidence that protecting parrotfishes in Caribbean marine reserves can lead to a dramatic reduction in seaweed and a concomitant rise in the recruitment and recovery of corals.
Prof. Mumby has worked with policy-makers in Belize and Bonaire to develop fisheries regulations that ban parrotfish exploitation, and currently works with the Bahamas National Trust on the design of marine reserve networks, funded, in large part by a Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation.
Prof. Mumby has authored more than 140 scientific publications and supervised 16 graduate students in both Britain and Australia. He has also chaired the interdisciplinary Remote Sensing Working Group of The World Bank since 2001, and currently forms part of the editorial boards of Phil Transactions B, Ecology Letters, and Marine Ecology Progress Series, and has been the Ecology Editor of the journal Coral Reefs for 4 years.
