Emily Webster
Emily started her PhD in November 2019. She uses satellite telemetry to track green sea turtles who are year-round residents in their inshore foraging grounds. Her research looks to understand the drivers of green turtle movements and how these movements relate to human activities in urban and industrial coastal areas. Her PhD is part of a long-term multi-disciplinary collaborative monitoring program that aims to manage potential impacts of planned port developments on the local marine environment. In her first thesis chapter she characterised space-use patterns and site fidelity of a green turtle foraging aggregation. She will also examine habitat suitability for the turtles and how their behaviour relates to changing environmental characteristics. She is interested in assessing any overlap between turtle habitat and infrastructural features including loading facilities for cargo vessels, dredged channels and land reclamation areas. Emily hopes to inform and enhance management options for this protected species by increasing understanding of their fine-scale habitat use.
PhD Advisors: Prof Mark Hamann, Dr. Stephanie Duce, Dr Colin Limpus, Dr Takahiro Shimada
