I have worked at Flinders, Deakin, Macquarie and Sydney Universities as well as the CSIRO over the past 35 years. As a quanttative ecologist specialising in the field assessment of ecological variation using well-designed sampling, manipulative experiments and modelling, I strive to seek out the true nature of aquatic ecosystems and human impacts thereupon. I have always sought to engender, in both my students and colleagues, intellectual rigour coupled with a sense of wonder. I believe that sound environmental management of our waters must be based on an understanding of how such ecosystems work. This, in turn, can be achieved by co-operation among scientists from a variety of disciplines and the involvement of stakeholders within the wider public. I have had many roles advising all levels of government, private enterprise, and the non-government sector about better environmental decision-making, including via long-term secondments.

My current research interests include studies of food webs in a variety of coastal marine and estuarine ecosystems, especially whether upwelling can affect intertidal ecosystems, the influence of groundwater under nearshore coastal ecosystems, scaling issues and patchiness of biological community structure, human impacts as disturbances, and ecological monitoring via the use of bioindicators of ecosystem health. Some of my other interests include ecological processes in aquatic ecosystems, realistic modelling of ecosystems, proper design and analysis of environmental research, philosophy, sociology and history of science (especially ecology/biology), the place of ecology in conservation biology, and environmental philosophy and public education.