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Want to learn about the wonderful ocean world right on your doorstep? Come along to hear about how seaweed can be used as public transport, why corals are incredible and the hidden diversity of our reefs!
Don't get carried away: using seaweed as a form of public transport
Mitchell Heide
(Mitch is a PhD Candidate at James Cook University. In his honours, he looked at epifauna on Sargassum seaweed to see if they can use floating algae as a vector of dispersal. He is active in multiple marine organisations and plans to use his passion for small marine life to raise awareness for protection and conservation.)
Seaweed is home to thousands of tiny animals called epifauna. These small crabs, snails and worms use the seaweed for food and shelter, but they may use it as public transport too. Every year, large amounts of seaweed become detached from the seafloor and float around our oceans. Do the epifauna take advantage of this free public transport? Or do they bail out and stay at home?
Why corals are Amazing!
Russell Kelley
(Russell Kelley works as an ocean literacy educator, author and science communicator with a special interest in coral reefs. He is manager of BYOGUIDES and author of the Indo Pacific Coral Finder, Octocoral Finder and the Reef Finder - the world's first visually searchable, smart ID guides, which form the basis of the training courses he runs world wide. Russell is a coral reef geologist and biologist by training and has a passion for telling stories.)
Corals might not have a brain, a complex nervous system, or organs, but they’ve somehow combined plants, solar power, and cloning into their animal lifestyle. They’ve even developed a deadly weapon system—the stinging cell—unique in the animal world. They may look like rocks attached to the seafloor, but somehow corals have travelled across oceans of space and time, building limestone empires along the way. ‘Why Corals Are Amazing’ is a talk richly illustrated with videos of corals actually doing things. Come along and be amazed!
Why do I travel the world smashing corals?
Tom Bridge
(Dr Tom Bridge is Senior Scientist and Curator of Corals at the Queensland Museum Tropics and an Associate Professor in the College of Science and Engineering at James Cook University. His research is conducted with an international team and involves extensive field work on reefs across the Indo-Pacific to understand the diversity and evolution of corals, providing fundamental data that underpins virtually every branch of coral reef science. )
If you have ever been to the reef, you’ve probably been told the golden rule: do not touch the coral. However, my job involves the opposite - I collect corals from around the world in order to study their diversity and evolution. Through sampling corals from different places, I compare both their morphology (what they look like) and their DNA to untangle the coral family tree. This research has revealed that the patterns of diversity in corals is far different than we previously thought. In particular, DNA analysis shows that looks have been deceiving - what we previously thought to be one widespread species is in fact many distinct species that have evolved to look similar. The result is that even in well-studies areas such as the Great Barrier Reef, around two thirds of the coral species are not in any coral ID books, and around a third are undescribed. Importantly, many of these species occur in relatively small areas, making them highly vulnerable to extinction. In this talk, I will discuss how we identify and name new species, and why this matters for management and conservation of coral reefs.
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2026-05-19
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Townsville Brewing Co
252 Flinders St, Townsville, QLD 4810, Australia