Partners of WIOMweb

WIOMweb Team

For the WIOMweb team, please see about us.

Partner Taxonomists

Dr Gerald R. Allen - Ichthyologist

Gerry is an internationally renowned authority on the classification and ecology of coral reef fishes of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. His expertise also encompasses freshwater fishes of the Australia-New Guinea region. He is the author of 31 books and nearly 400 scientific publications. He has an intimate knowledge of fish life on coral reefs, having logged more than 7,000 hours of scuba diving.

Field studies form an integral part of Gerry’s research, probably more so than any other marine biologist. Over his career, he has accumulated more than 10 years on various expeditions to all the world’s tropical seas. He was born in Los Angeles, California in 1942. He received a PhD in marine zoology from the University of Hawaii in 1971, completing his thesis on anemonefishes.

A year later he immigrated to Australia with wife, Connie, and son, Tony. He served as Curator of Fishes at the Western Australian Museum in Perth for 24 years, leaving in 1998 to take a position with Conservation International as their Science Team Leader for marine surveys in Southeast Asia.

He maintains a rigorous research schedule including studies of coral reef fish classification and is currently mapping the geographic distributions of all Indo-Pacific reef fishes - more than 4,000 species. Gerry is also an avid underwater photographer, with several thousand of his underwater photos appearing in various publications. He is a past President of the Australian Society for Fish Biology, an honorary foreign member of the American Society of Ichthyology and Herpetology, and a recipient of the prestigious K. Radway Allen Award for Outstanding Contributions in Ichthyological Science.

Dr Douglas Fenner - Coral Biologist

Doug grew up in the US, where he received his BA from Reed College and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. At university he discovered a love for coral reefs after assisting professors conducting reef fish studies in Hawaii. After his graduate school in Jamaica, he made some of the first survey dives of reefs at Cozumel, Mexico, the Cayman Islands and St. Lucia. During this time he became very adept at coral surveying and ID and after a stint working in Hawaii, it lead to the publication of his first book entitled "Corals of Hawaii", an identification fieldguide.

Doug then began work for Coral Cay Conservation in the Phillipines, as part of a joint venture with an EU-funded project. He subsequently spent 6 years at the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), working with Dr Charles Veryon, the author of the renowned book, "Corals of the World", where many of his photos were used. He is now working for the Department of Marine & Wildlife Resources in American Samoa, where he is a coral reef monitoring ecologist.

Dr Christopher Raxworthy - Herpetologist

Chris's research focuses on Old World reptile and amphibian systematics and biogeography, especially the study of family relationships among species of chameleons.  His work has provided new information on the historical process of reptile species formation in Madagascar and has helped policymakers set priorities for conservation planning. 

When he began his research there 20 years ago as a leader of a student expedition, only 370 species of Malagasy reptiles and amphibians had been identified.  Since then he has found, in collaboration with others, more than 150 new species and has added a wealth of information to the published literature on known species.  His chameleon systematics project includes field surveys in remote, mountainous areas of northern Madagascar, many of which have never been previously explored or surveyed. 

He has also conducted fieldwork in Ghana, Mali, Morocco, Senegal, Seychelles, Turkey, and Vietnam.  Research based on Asian and African fieldwork is helping him search for historical links between frogs and reptiles from before Madagascar and India carried away their own parts of the Gondwanan supercontinent.  His broader research interests include the applications of geographic information systems (GIS) for identifying the geographic distribution of reptile species, findings that are useful to setting conservation priorities and discovering new species. 

He received a B.S. in zoology from the Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London, England, in 1985 and a Ph.D. in biology from the Open University, Milton Keynes, England, in 1989. He joined the Museum as Associate Curator in 2000.  He is an adjunct research scientist at Columbia University, an adjunct research investigator at the University of Michigan, and an external lecturer at the University of Antananarivo, Madagascar.

Dr Peter Long - Ornithologist

Peter studied at the University of Durham, and received a BSc in Zoology, before moving to the University of Bath to complete his PhD, finishing in 2008.

Peter is still based at the University of Bath, and his longterm research is looking at testing the effects of ecological and life-history traits on population trends of wetland birds using a phylogenetic comparative analysis.

Fieldwork in Madagascar and collaboration with Malagasy scientists forms an important component of his work - the Madagascar plover and Sakalava rail are two threatened endemic wetland birds which he is studying using GIS techniques. 

Alasdair Harris - Coral Biologist

Al has been fascinated by exploratory research from a very early age. Having spent time living and working in the Indian and Nepali Himalaya, his first big trip saw him lead an unassisted 5-man expedition to camp III on the Tibetan side of Everest. As a student his growing passion for tropical marine ecology led him to organise a series of coral reef research expeditions to countries around the Western Indian Ocean region. The first of these expeditions was awarded the British Sub Aqua Club medal by the Duke of Edinburgh at Buckingham Palace, in recognition of its achievements in Madagascar.

Al graduated from Edinburgh University top of his year with first-class honours in Zoology. After a brief stint working with white sharks in South Africa he gained his Masters degree in Environmental Management at Oxford University, where he organised further marine research expeditions to Madagascar, and chaired the University Exploration Society before going on to co-found Blue Ventures.

He is a regular speaker at conferences and events around the UK and overseas, and when not talking about conservation, can usually be found plotting his next escape to the hills, whether on foot, bike or skis.

Outside his work at Blue Ventures Al is a keen environmental activist and recently represented the UK at the United Nations youth summit on climate change. He is also studying for his PhD looking at the devastating effects of climate change on coral reefs in the Indian Ocean.

Dan Logan - PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor

(coming soon)

Kit Gillibrand - PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor

(coming soon)