 Ryan Donnelly provides services to the commercial fishing industry; and fishery and marine protected areas managers. He specialises in establishing cooperative approaches to prescribing world's best practice in commercial fishing that satisfy the goals of Ecologically Sustainable Development, the conservation of biological diversity and assisting industry to promote their product on the basis of demonstrating sound provenance.
Based in the tropical gateway city of Cairns in far north |
He produced the Stewardship Action Plan for the aquarium supply fisheries on the Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea that establishes uniform standards for specimen collection that does not impact upon key ecological processes; and creates compulsory site assessment and reporting protocols for collectors when early season sea surface temperature monitoring indicates a high risk of coral bleaching.
This response mechanism to events linked to climate change is believed to a worlds first for a commercial fishery and is expected to form a template for adoption by other fisheries on the Great Barrier Reef. Ryan has a background in tropical fisheries research and management; and extensive exposure to high level strategic direction setting. He has completed comprehensive socio-economic studies for fisheries in the Solomon Islands and Indonesia; has extensive field experience; and has lead a network of seafood and marine industry businesses to achieve competitive advantage through collaboration.
He is a director with the Australian Marine Training Network that created the Great Barrier Reef International Marine College in Cairns from the original concept stage; and is currently the Coastal and Marine Director with Terrain Ltd, which targets natural resource management challenges in the Wet Tropics region of far north |
