Treasurer: 2024 –
Jo has worked as an environmental scientist for over 30 years and has broad-ranging experience across marine and coastal environments of Australia. A long history in consultancy gives her extensive technical expertise in impact assessment and environmental management in relation to oil and gas activities, port developments, dredging, desalination, wastewater discharges, tidal power proposals and solar salt production.
Over decades of monitoring coral, seagrass, macroalgal and mangrove habitats, she developed an academic interest in the interaction of physical and biological processes in the marine environment. Pursuing this interest, she recently completed a PhD that focused on the effect of water level variability on coral cover at the Houtman Abrolhos Islands (Western Australia), and she is currently researching the impacts of seagrass loss at the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. More broadly, her research interests are to do with temporal variability in benthic habitats and emerging techniques for monitoring these environments using remote sensing.
Jo is an active member of the Australian Marine Sciences Association and a Certified Environmental Practitioner under the EIANZ certification scheme. She maintains commercial diving qualifications and engage in field work whenever possible.