Jessica Nguyen

I graduated from UNSW in 2023 with a Bachelor of Advanced Science (1st class Honours) UNSW, majoring in Genetics and Marine and Coastal Science. Adriana Verges supervised my honours project in 2023 (UNSW) and Scott Ling (UTAS) exploring predation of the black long spined sea urchin in the Sydney area. My passion for investigating real ecological problems has lead me to starting a PhD in 2025 in the Fisheries and Marine Environmental (FAMER) lab understanding "Fish connectivity across urbanised estuaries" especially fish during their early life stages.

Supervised by: Iain M Suthers, Matt Taylor, Nathan Knott and Adriana Verges

Project Title: Fish connectivity across urbanised estuaries: How does infrastructure affect patterns of settlement and recruitment ?

Project Description: Persistent urban development in estuaries has made traditional settlement grounds less accessible and connected or absent for larval fish. Gamay (Botany Bay) has been highly modified since British colonisation becoming Sydney's industrial hub, with a major airport runway, reventment walls, ports and more built into the coastal landscape. My PhD focuses on Aim 1 looking at early life history stages of fish in an ARC linkage project "Assessing fish connectivity across highly-modified seascapes.". This project aims to quantify the effects of large-scale infrastructure on fish connectivity and populations by advancing our understanding of critical ecological processes such as larval fish settlement and recruitment within these modified coastal seascapes. This project is in collaboration with DPIRD, USYD and the Gamay Rangers.