SEACS Lab (UNSW)

Sketch in notepad by Niki Bañados from Dana Lanceman's talk, in green, detailing their work on saltmarsh and wetlands, with illustrations of trees and birds.

Sketch in notepad by Niki Bañados of Milly Caley's talk, in purple, with illustrations of turtles, birds, fish and streetlights and information on marine impacts of light pollution.

Last night, Dana and Milly spoke at the #CooksRiverValleyAssociation meeting. We had great discussions about #lightpollution and #saltmarsh restoration. Niki Bañados (@stickwriter on Instagram) sketched these amazing illustrations of our talks! Check out more here www.nikibanados.com 🌊🧪🌐

Curious about #lightpollution impacts underwater and in our urban ecosystems? Join this free webinar tomorrow, 10.30am Sydney time with A/Prof Mariana Mayer Pinto 🌊🌐🧪😊💡

YouTube video by UNSW Grand designs for our oceans' habitats with Ann Flemming Nielsen | One Big Idea

Can seagrass restoration be more successful when we mimic existing seagrass beds? 🌱 Another talented PhD student of ours, Ann Nielsen spoke at the UNSW Big Ideas festival late last year. Watch here! 🌊🌐🧪 #marineecology #seagrass #posidonia

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mJJ...

Three aquarium tubs containing sea urchins and terracotta pots, with a scientist leaning into a tub.

Person walking away in a field carrying buckets and wearing a hat, with saltmarsh and dead trees in the foreground and mangroves in the background.

What do light pollution and saltmash have in common? They are both found along the Cooks river! Milly Caley and Dana Lanceman will give a talk on Feb 17th on light pollution in marine environments and saltmarsh and mangrove restoration for the Cooks River Valley association 🌊🧪🌐😊💡🌱

Our Mission This is "Our Mission" by Seeds of the Sea on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

We have very talented PhD students! PhD student Natalie Coy founded Seeds of the Sea, to record flowering of endangered #Posidonia australis #seagrass. Check out the video she made about it (and website) below.

vimeo.com/1136638387?f...

www.seedsofthesea.org #marineecology #oceanoptimism 🌊🌐🧪

YouTube video by UNSW Science Light pollution and the marine world

Light pollution is an underappreciated and growing threat to marine #biodiversity. It already affects ~22% of global coastlines and can reach the seafloor.

This video, made with #UNSW, #ADSA, and #DCCEEW, highlights why marine #lightpollution matters 🌊🌐🧪

#ALAN 💡

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rtd7...

Yesterday was #WorldWetlandsDay ! A timely reminder on the importance of our wetland ecosystems.

Dana's PhD investigates how long it takes for ecosystem services to return to restored wetland sites.

You can read the first paper from their PhD here.

doi.org/10.1111/gcb....

Yes absolutely!

@unswbees.bsky.social @nikihubbard.bsky.social

YouTube video by Dana Lanceman Restoring Coastal Wetlands

A short film by PhD student, Dana Lanceman, on restoring coastal wetlands. This video depicts the emotional journey of a mangrove crab, moving from wetland degradation to ecosystem restoration. Watch and learn how to support wetland restoration! 🌊🧪🌐🦀

#marineecology #crab

youtu.be/PWhoiMt0fCM?...

Diversity, history and overlooked beauty: The fight to revive Sydney’s forgotten second harbour Despite the ravages of industry and urban development, Botany Bay has retained pockets of surprising beauty with biodiversity to rival Sydney Harbour. Now a revival is under way, as an Indigenous-led ...

www.smh.com.au/interactive/...

Living seawalls bringing life back into harbours Sarah Ferguson presents Australia's premier daily current affairs program, delivering agenda-setting public affairs journalism and interviews that hold the powerful to account. Plus political analysis...

A recent video feature on the Living Seawalls project in Sydney Harbour, @livingseawalls.bsky.social , featuring Mariana Mayer Pinto and Alex Goad 😊🧪🌐🌊

www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12...

The latest (and largest) Living Seawall installation to date! 🌊🧪🌐🌎

#marineecology #ecoengineering #naturebasedsolutions

WEBINAR - The Impacts of ALAN on Marine Environments - Australasian Dark Sky Alliance Scientia Senior Lecturer at UNSW and 2025 Eureka Prize winner for her seawall research. Marine ecologist, Impact Ambassador for the Australasian Dark Sky Alliance, and featured speaker at Valuing Dark...

Upcoming free webinar on marine impacts of light pollution!
A/Prof Mariana Mayer Pinto will present an online webinar on the impacts of #lightpollution on #marineecology on the 17th February 2026 at 10:30 am AEDT, organised by the Australasian Dark Sky Alliance 🧪💡🌐🌊

tinyurl.com/light-webinar

A hand drawn image in black and white pen showing a cross-section of a coastal landscape illuminated by light pollution. The top of the image shows vertical light lines extending into the sky, above five semi-circles that look like hills. Below these hills are horizontal lines and circles that are emitting yellow texta light lines downwards. Moving down the page, under these yellow lines is the sea surface and small boats. Under the waters surface are schools of fish outlined, and at the bottom of the page are seaweeds extending up to the surface.

Wonderful illustration by Hyunh Kim from Mariana's talk at the Valuing Darkness Symposium.

Over 20% of the world’s coastlines experience #lightpollution, yet we have limited knowledge of its impacts on #marineecology and key habitat-forming organisms 🧪🌊💡🌐

Read more here: tinyurl.com/ADSA-conf

Great article, featuring our PhD student Ann Flemming Nielsen talking about work she is involved in with the Gamay Rangers and UNSW, and her PhD research, testing the best ways to restore endangered Posidonia australis seagrass in Gamay/Botany Bay 🌐🌱🌊🧪

Repetition and order of exposure to salinization and nutrient enrichment drive freshwater microbial community responses Biological systems face multiple stressors that impact biodiversity and ecosystem functions, with complex interactions that vary spatially and temporally leading to unpredictable outcomes. In freshwa...

New paper alert!! Repetition and order of exposure to salinization and nutrient enrichment drive freshwater microbial community responses, led by PhD student Rose Fuggle with supervisors Mariana Mayer Pinto, Miguel Matias and Ziggy Marzinelli. 🧪🌐🦠

Read here: doi.org/10.1002/ecy....

#microbes

🚨 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗽𝗮𝗽𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗿𝘁! PhD candidate Annemie Rose Janssen exposed kelp populations to copper contamination to see whether kelp from the inner harbour would respond differently to outer harbour kelp. Results indicate local adaptation to contamination in the inner harbour! 🧪🌊🌐
doi.org/10.1016/j.ma...

Annemie Rose discussing her recent paper on kelp genetic differentiation and local adaptation in Sydney Harbour 🌊🧪🌐

doi.org/10.1016/j.ma...

New paper from PhD student Annemie Rose Jannsen, who found distinct #kelp genotypes in the inner and outer parts of #SydneyHarbour. Genotype-environment analyses suggest adaptation to local conditions.

Super cool results, great work Annemie Rose & coauthors!!

🌊🌐🧪 #marine

doi.org/10.1016/j.ma...

Thanks Elizabeth! We are super excited about the project 😊🌱

Call for beachgoers to snap pics for science - ABC listen If you've ever been swimming or diving along the south coast of Australia, you might be familiar with the stunning array of colours and textures that make up our native seagrass meadows. But did you ...

PhD student Natalie Coy spoke on Radio National this morning about the Seeds of the Sea citizen science project. This project asks citizen scientists to report sightings of Posidonia seagrass flowers in NSW, to inform future restoration of this endangered species. 🌊🌐🧪

www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

Close up image with Green Posidonia seagrass buds in the foreground, and seagrass and sand in the background.

A new citizen science project, Seeds of the Sea, run by one of our PhD students Natalie Coy has launched, helping to map seagrass flowering of #Posidonia in south-eastern Australia.

Check out the website and map of sightings here: www.seedsofthesea.org

🧪🌍🦤🦑🌐🌊

Graphical abstract showing two plots illustrating distance to centroid (degree of dispersion), with the left plot showing values for Ecklonia radiata (picture of Ecklonia below, with symbol showing microbes) and right plot showing values for Sargassum (picture of Sargassum below, with symbol showing microbes). The Ecklonia plot shows greater dispersion with warming, while the sargassum plot shows no effect of treatment.

Seaweed-associated microbial communities show limited responses to light pollution and warming 🌱💡

New paper assessing the independent and combined effects of #lightpollution and #oceanwarming on microbial communities associated with two habitat-forming #seaweed species 🧪🌐🌊

doi.org/10.1016/j.ma...

The Living Seawalls team standing on stage at the Australian Museum Eureka Prize Awards 2025. From left to right: Janine Ledet, Aria Lee, Mariana Mayer Pinto, Melanie Bishop, Maria Vozzo and Kyle Hilliam.

Congratulations our lab leader, Mariana Mayer Pinto and to the whole Living Seawalls team, who won the 2025 Eureka Prize for Environmental Research! A wonderful achievement. Watch the short video for this project at  www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yrR...

#MarineEcology 🧪🌊🌐🌱

e-petitions e-petitions

Light pollution caused by excessive Artificial Light at Night (ALAN) has harmful effects on wildlife. This petition calls for legislation to limit light pollution, to reduce impacts on wildlife and people. www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/...

Impact of wildfires on sediment quality in estuaries in New South Wales, Australia Climate change is increasing wildfire intensity, introducing new risks to estuarine systems. However, the impacts of wildfires on estuaries and their …

Another recent paper from our lab on the impact of #bushfires on sediment quality in #estuaries, led by Thayanne Lima Barros, with coauthors Mariana Mayer-Pinto, Katherine Dafforn, Stuart Simpson, Mark Farrell, Sally Bracewell and Emma Johnston.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

🧪🌎🌐

Multiple stressors affect function rather than taxonomic structure of freshwater microbial communities - npj Biofilms and Microbiomes npj Biofilms and Microbiomes - Multiple stressors affect function rather than taxonomic structure of freshwater microbial communities

Recent paper highlight - Multiple stressors affect function rather than taxonomic structure of freshwater microbial communities, headed by PhD student Rose Fuggle supervised by Miguel G. Matias, Mariana Mayer-Pinto & Ezequiel M. Marzinelli.

🧪🌐

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This work follows on from Annemie Rose's Masters project, where she found inner harbour kelp had higher lead and lower nitrogen concentrations, while outer harbour kelp had thicker stipes and longer and narrower laminae with spines. Read here:
doi.org/10.1016/j.ma...

Annemie Rose holds two Ecklonia radiata/kelp adults. She is standing on a boat in a wetsuit.

An underwater photo, showing a snorkeller, Milly Caley, holding a kelp individual (Ecklonia radiata). In the background is a kelp forest.

A photo of Sydney Harbour, with the Sydney Opera House in the background, and in a foreground, three people on a boat, smiling, in wetsuits and lifejackets. These three people are Luke Walker, Annemie Rose and Milly Caley.

Fieldwork highlight! PhD student Annemie Rose is investigating whether kelps in the inner harbour are more adapted to urbanisation 🌱🌆 Yesterday we collected kelp from inner and outer sites in Sydney Harbour, for experiments where she will test responses to copper and nutrients!
📸 by Aliah Banchik