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• Joe Scutt Phillips

Research Interests

-Interactions between fisheries practices and fish behaviour, physiology, and population ecology

-Climate impacts on fisheries and marine ecosystem services

-Examination of data-poor marine systems using empirical observations and computational simulation in unison

My research interests center on trying to understand and predict the behaviour of marine ecosystems. Impacts from fishing pressure, changing climate and loss of biodiversity are of immediate concern in many parts of the world, particularly for under-developed nations that rely on economically significant or subsistence fisheries.

Pelagic fish inhabit the water column in open ocean and coastal areas, where they can travel vast distances as large aggregations in both the hunt for and flight from other species in this ecosystem. The impact on commercial, pelagic fish species from industrial fishing practices are increasingly being identified as more complex than a simple exploitation of biomass. The use of fish aggregation devices by purse-seine fleets affects both the behaviour and physiological condition of fish such as tunas, and whilst these impacts have been clearly observed in recent years, the exact nature of the processes causing them remain unknown. My current research aims to examine the strength of these impacts on individuals, aggregations, and populations, by analysing archival tag and isotope data in combination, as well as using individual-based modelling to explore the theoretical mechanisms that cause such observed patterns.

I am currently based at the National Oceanography Centre, and funded by the EPSRC through the Institute for Complex Systems Simulation in Southampton University, UK. My supervisors are Dr Clive Trueman (NOC), Dr Jason Noble (ICSS) and Dr Graham Pilling (SPC).

Employment

2010 - Current | PhD Research Student: National Oceanography Centre Institute for Complex Systems Simulation University of Southampton, UK

2008 - 2010 | Fisheries Biologist: Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Sciences Suffolk, UK

2006 - 2007 | Research Assistant: Ministry of Marine Resources Aitutaki, Cook Islands

Working with...

Jason Noble Research Fellow, Electronics and Computer Science (FPAS)

Research Groups

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