RSSA August 2025 Meeting and Scientific Presentation

The Royal Society of South Australia is pleased to invite you to its August meeting and scientific presentation.

Following on from last month's brilliant talks, we are sticking with our coastlines themes. A special line-up of two expert marine biologists, Janine Baker and Brad Martin, are our guest speakers for evening. They will be presenting their research and extensive knowledge on marine environments, exploring Adelaide's once extensive shellfish reefs in an urban context, and South Australia's ongoing and devastating harmful algal bloom.

Brad Martin: "Understanding shellfish reefs in Adelaide's urban seascape"

Janine Baker: "The HAB in SA – what we know, and what we can do to help the marine environment"

SPEAKERS

Janine Baker

Janine Baker (Marine Janine) has worked in South Australian marine research for 36 years, and in marine education for 15 years, doing contracts for government agencies, NGOs, universities, research orgs, and as a sole trader. Janine’s work has included mathematical modelling of fisheries stocks, marine species conservation assessments, surveys of sea floor cover, field projects on indigenous and introduced marine invertebrates, and marine parks research. Janine has worked on seadragons since 1996, previously analysing and reporting on community sighting data for the original Dragon Search program. Since 2013, Janine has worked with over 120 divers in SA to monitor nearshore seadragon populations, developing reliable visual markers to recognise individual seadragons. Janine works mainly in marine citizen science project management, but has also worked and tutored in primary special education, written various guidebooks and chapters on marine flora and fauna of SA, and delivered dozens of marine science school and community education presentations and workshops. Since moving to the Eyre Peninsula in 2023, Janine has worked in citizen science, marine sectors, government agencies, universities here and overseas, and with private taxonomists, to identify and document introduced marine species in Eyre Peninsula waters, and in metropolitan Adelaide waters.  For more than 4 months so far in 2025, Janine has been fully engaged in the harmful algal bloom - data gathering from multiple sources, reporting, education, and liaison between government agencies, fishing community, researchers, citizen science, and the public.  In some years, when time permits, Janine promotes South Australian marine art and artists, and has curated several community art exhibitions in various parts of South Australia.  

Brad Martin

Brad Martin is a marine ecologist, with a background in fish community monitoring research. He recently submitted his PhD on South Australian shellfish reefs as fish habitats at Flinders University. His work has described the fish communities and functions associated with SA's flat oyster restoration reefs, razor clam beds and non-native Pacific oyster reefs. Brad is also the SA Project Manager for OzFish Unlimited, a fishing conservation charity that supports community-based waterway restoration, such as the ‘Seeds for Snapper’ seagrass and Port River oyster reef restoration projects.

EVENT DETAILS

The event will begin at 6:00 pm with nibbles, refreshments and opportunities for pre-meeting discussions and networking. A small donation to the RSSA is greatly appreciated to partake in this and support the continued provision of these pre-meeting treats.

This event will be held in-person in the Royal Society rooms, but we will simultaneously live-stream the meeting via Zoom for those not able to attend on the night.

To attend either in person, or online, you must register here. The zoom link will be sent to you on registration. Please feel free to share this event with your institution or networks.

If in-person tickets are sold out, please be aware that we are unable to admit more people than our room capacity. If online tickets are sold out, please contact admin@rssa.org.au and we can supply the zoom link to you.

For more information on the location of the RSSA rooms, please visit https://www.rssa.org.au/contact/