David is the Team Leader at the UTS Fish Ecology Lab, which undertakes innovative research of the sustainability of the oceans and fish populations, and records the life histories of fishes on coral reefs and coasts, and in the deep sea and estuaries. He leads UTS’s research of weedy seadragons, an endemic species of Australian syngnathid that ranges from Port Stephens, NSW to Geraldton in Western Australia, and he is the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) specialist on seadragons. David is a strong advocate of sustainable fisheries and marine parks, and a supporter of citizen science. He has been a scientific adviser to the ClimateWatch-Atlas of Life collaboration that brings amateur naturalists and scientists together to work on big projects, such as surveying wildlife populations.