Nereus Program Principal Investigator Daniel Dunn (University of Queensland) and the Migratory Connectivity in the Ocean System (MiCO) team recently won the Ocean Awards 2020 Innovation Award from the Blue Marine Foundation for their work on marine species (sea turtles, marine mammals, sea birds, and fish) that migrate through ocean basins. MiCO started at a side event at a United Nations Intergovernmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (ABNJ), with the aim to move away from aggregate to more usable data when it comes to migratory marine species. Born out of the idea that critical ecological knowledge was not adequately being used when it comes to understanding these species’ migration patterns in regard to ocean governance, the researchers developed a model prototype using “100,000 data points, 382 different species, and 55 countries” to develop a way to make the data easier to understand and use. Congratulations to everyone involved!

The above description was adapted from the Blue Marine Foundation awards website.

Principal Investigator Daniel Dunn, formerly at Duke University’s Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab (MGEL) and now at University of Queensland.

Related Works