Simon J Pierce is a
marine biologist
Marine biology is the scientific study of the biology of marine life, organisms that inhabit the sea. Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology clas ...
and
conservationist known for discovering, studying, and protecting large marine animals such as
whale shark
The whale shark (''Rhincodon typus'') is a slow-moving, filter feeder, filter-feeding carpet shark and the largest known Extant taxon, extant fish species. The largest confirmed individual had a length of . The whale shark holds many records for ...
s and
manta ray
Manta rays are large Batoidea, rays belonging to the genus ''Mobula'' (formerly its own genus ''Manta''). The larger species, ''Giant oceanic manta ray, M. birostris'', reaches in width, while the smaller, ''Reef manta ray, M. alfredi'', reac ...
s. He is the co-founder and principal scientist of the
Marine Megafauna Foundation.
Pierce has developed several
non-invasive research techniques
for endangered species,
such as developing photo-identification with computer image analysis and artificial intelligence to track populations of whale sharks and other species of marine animal.
These techniques have been incorporated into
Citizen Science
The term citizen science (synonymous to terms like community science, crowd science, crowd-sourced science, civic science, participatory monitoring, or volunteer monitoring) is research conducted with participation from the general public, or am ...
projects, including
Sharkbook, the global shark monitoring database, as well as other
MMF projects such as
Manta Matcher.
He led the conservation assessment on whale sharks for the
IUCN Red List in 2016, which resulted in the whale sharkâs global protection through an Appendix I listing on the
UN Convention on Migratory Species in 2017 and then led the firs
IUCN Green Status conservation assessment on whale sharks in 2021
Pierce is a
wildlife photographer.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pierce, Simon J
Marine biologists
Marine conservation
Underwater photographers
New Zealand scientists
New Zealand marine biologists
University of Queensland alumni
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
21st-century New Zealand biologists