Dr Lara Atkinson
20 May 2026, 12:00 - 13:00, Online
South Africa's offshore benthic biodiversity: Progress, challenges and opportunities
In celebration of International Biodiversity Day on 22 May, this presentation showcases fifteen years of foundational offshore biodiversity research in South Africa, sharing discoveries, lessons learnt and the growing momentum. From the initiatives that helped to mobilise and collate critical offshore benthic datasets, to how these data have been taken up across the research-to-management value chain, this presentation shares the progress achieved so far. With a focus on deep sea benthic invertebrates, she will explore how foundational knowledge has been translated to inform conservation and management outcomes, while acknowledging some obstacles encountered and the solutions that helped to move us forwards. Finally, she will touch on some exciting opportunities that lie ahead for this research in South Africa as we build international partnerships and contribute towards the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.
Dr Atkinson has served as the Offshore Biodiversity Scientist with the NRF South African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON) since 2010, focusing on long-term monitoring of offshore benthic epifaunal invertebrates and assessing human impacts on the marine environment. Dr Atkinson collaborates actively with offshore industries including commercial trawl and petroleum mining, promoting sustainable resource use and marine conservation. As an Honorary Research Associate at the University of Cape Town, she contributes to capacity development through lecturing, mentoring, and postgraduate supervision.
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Dr Linda Harris
22 April 2026, 13:00 - 14:00, Online and Venue (Hybrid event)
What's that under my beach towel?
Participants came for a (virtual) walk on the beach to learn about South Africa’s unique beach biota, and research that was underway to understand, manage and conserve sandy shores. On a typical beach in Nelson Mandela Bay, there were about 70 macroinvertebrates crawling in the sand under each beach towel. Even though South African beaches were among the best studied globally, there were numerous undescribed species that were still being discovered, including eight Cirolanid isopods. Insects previously found in the intertidal had generally been dismissed as vagrants, but recent observations have shown there’s a pygmy mole cricket in South Africa that was a beach specialist. The daily cross-shore migrations undertaken by this tiny species highlighted how remarkably beach animals were adapted to survive such dynamic systems. Although beaches provided two-thirds of all types of ecosystem services, and supported unique, diverse communities of biota, they were social-ecological systems at increasing risk of collapse. Research in two international projects, Beaches for Life! and TIDELINES, was building capacity and generating knowledge to help safeguard beaches worldwide.
Dr Harris is a Research Associate at CMR, and a Pew Marine Fellow. She leads the Coast component of the National Biodiversity Assessment, co-chairs the IUCN SSC South African National Special Specialist Group, and sits on several national committees. Her research spans diverse topics in the field of coastal and marine biodiversity assessment, planning, ecology and conservation.
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Mr Joshua Wilson
10 April 2026, 13:00 - 14:00, Online and Venue (Hybrid event)
Projected redistribution of penguins under climate change - In recognition of World Aquatic Day
Species redistribute as climate change affects their habitat. Marine management tools must anticipate shifting distributions to limit the cumulative impacts of climate change and other anthropogenic threats. Here we model the future suitability of penguin breeding and foraging habitat in the Southern Ocean using circumpolar colony locations and foraging telemetry data. We project end-of-century shifts using global climate models. Models projected a polewards redistribution of most species, and a major range contraction for emperor penguins, estimated to lose up to 70% of their core habitat. A low-emissions future correlated with reduced magnitudes of range shifts and contractions for all species. Results highlight that implementing proposed marine protected areas in Antarctica, and complementing them with additional management measures would shield key climate refugia and improve the climate resilience of penguins. As sentinel species, range projections of penguins warn of potential redistributions of terrestrial and marine ecosystems in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean.
Mr Wilson is a PhD student based at the University of Southampton and the British Antarctic Survey in the United Kingdom. His research leverages global collections of tracking data to better understand drivers and dynamics of marine predator hotspots in the Southern Ocean. He is visiting Nelson Mandela University for a research placement to work with Prof Pierre Pistorius on a range of tracking projects.
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Dr Markus Geldenhuis, South African Weather Service and Forschungszentrum Jülich
26 March 2026, 10:00 - 11:00, Online
Exploring the Upper Atmosphere to Close Climate Knowledge Gaps
The upper troposphere and stratosphere remain among the least observed regions of Earth’s atmosphere, yet they play a critical role in regulating climate, atmospheric circulation, and the transport of greenhouse and ozonedepleting gases. We use Aircores, the MOSES Payload and the newly designed NIXE-Ballon instrument flown on weather balloons to open new opportunities to directly sample these remote layers of the atmosphere. During a collaborative campaign between the South African Weather Service and the Forschungszentrum Jülich Institute for Climate and Energy Systems (ICE-4: Stratosphere), an expanded suite of balloon-borne sensors is being deployed to measure greenhouse gases, trace halocarbons, water vapour, aerosols and microscopic cirrus cloud particles. Because such measurements are exceptionally scarce in the Southern Hemisphere, these observations offer a rare window into atmospheric composition and change, providing essential data to improve satellite validation and climate model predictions.
In this webinar, this innovative observational approach was introduced and preliminary findings were shared to highlight its potential to close critical knowledge gaps in climate science and reduce uncertainties in climate projections.
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Mr Luther Adams
09 - 10 March 2026, Seminar and Workshop, Online and Venue (Hybrid event)
Seminar: Strategies for counting fauna and flora using computer vision over space, time and different sensors for ecology.
Processing large image and video datasets manually is time-consuming and often impractical at ecological scales. Computer vision (CV) enables rapid, repeatable extraction of biological information from imagery collected across diverse marine environments and sensor platforms. However, many marine scientists face barriers in knowing where to begin, which tools to use, and how to design robust workflows. This seminar presented practical strategies for applying computer vision to biodiversity monitoring, with emphasis on counting fauna and flora across spatial and temporal scales. The seminar discussed data requirements, model selection, annotation strategies, domain shift across sensors, and deployment considerations. Through real-world marine ecology examples, participants were shown how raw imagery could be transformed into ecologically meaningful metrics.
Workshop: An introduction to computer vision for marine ecology
This one-day hands-on workshop introduced marine scientists to practical computer vision workflows for ecological applications. Participants learned how to prepare image datasets, train and evaluate deep learning models, and deploy models to generate ecological metrics. No prior machine learning experience was required, but a laptop, with a mouse and an account on BIIGLE were essential. By the end of the workshop, participants had trained and evaluated a working computer vision model on marine imagery and understood how to adapt the workflows to their own datasets.
Mr Adams is a benthic ecologist with expertise in underwater image processing. Currently, he is a PhD candidate at Rhodes University with affiliations to the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity and the South African National Biodiversity Institute. His work focuses on marine ecosystem classification and mapping, and automated biodiversity monitoring. Over the past five years, he has developed and applied computer vision approaches to extract ecological information from large underwater image datasets.
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Prof Pierre Pistorius
02 March 2026, 13:00-14:00, Online and Venue (Hybrid event)
Underwater Perspectives: Using animal-borne cameras to study penguin foraging behaviour and ecosystem processes - In recognition of World Wildlife Day
Penguins are among the most charismatic species inhabiting the Southern Ocean. They often constitute valuable sentinels of environmental changes and are also important consumers contributing to ecosystem functioning. Relatively easy to study on land, their behaviour at sea has until quite recently remained poorly understood. Enabled through technological developments in both tracking devices and video cameras that can be deployed on penguins, we have been able to assess important aspects of penguin biology in relation to specific ecological contexts. I will start this talk by providing a broad overview of biologging (the use of electronic instruments deployed on animals) developments that have enabled us to remotely study marine wildlife before providing a history of our research findings obtained through the deployment of small video cameras on penguins. This work has allowed us to observe how different penguin species perceive and interact with the underwater environment across diverse oceanic regions. It has also underscored their crucial role in ecosystem functioning and the importance of incorporating their ecology into ecosystem-based management strategies.
Prof Pistorius is a globally recognised marine ecologist and academic based at Nelson Mandela University. As Head and Founder of the Marine Apex Predator Research Unit (MAPRU) within the university’s Institute for Coastal and Marine Research, he leads cutting-edge research into marine top predators — including seabirds, seals and cetaceans. His work uses marine predators as indicators of ocean health and as tools for public engagement on marine biodiversity issues. His work spans a broad geographic range, combining long-term
demographic monitoring, biologging and spatial ecology. Beyond research outputs (having authored on over 150 peer-reviewed publications), he has played a significant role in postgraduate training, having supervised numerous MSc and PhD candidates and fostering interdisciplinary capacity in marine science.
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