Meet our staff

Carolyn is Principal Scientist in Marine Ecology and member of the University of Auckland/NIWA Joint Graduate School in Coastal and Marine Science. She describes herself as a bit of ‘Jane of all things marine ecology’ – she works across ecosystems ranging from coasts and estuaries, to the deep sea – basically working in any ecosystem where she can apply the tools and skills she has to help solve problems. 

In general, most of what Carolyn does is at the boundary of science and society - what are the decisions we need to make, and how do we bring in the science we need to make these decisions, whether this is where to put marine reserves, or to protect or remove mangroves, or where to ban trawl fishing to protect sensitive habitats. Most of  her research involves modelling of marine biodiversity and improving our understanding of how ecosystems function. 

Carolyn’s research is applied or mission-driven science, often working directly with regional and central government to provide solutions for managing New Zealand’s oceans. She actively contributes at the international science-policy interface, and currently serves on the United Nations IPBES Multidisciplinary Expert Panel, where she leads their scenarios and models task force which developed the Nature Futures Framework, a new tool for developing nature-positive scenarios.  

Darren Parsons is a Principal Scientist in Marine Ecology and Inshore Fisheries at NIWA and a Senior Lecturer in Marine Sciences at the University of Auckland. His research interests include inshore fish ecology and fisheries as well as ecosystem-based fishery management. At NIWA, Darren’s research has an applied focus through various Fisheries New Zealand projects that monitor the age structure and abundance of inshore fish populations. He is also working towards the implementation of Ecosystem Based Fishery Management in New Zealand.  

Through the University of Auckland, Darren supervises graduate students whose research topics have an ecological focus, mostly on inshore fish species, often snapper. These projects have covered topics such as fish nursery habitats, movement ecology, recruitment patterns, diet, morphology, microplastic ingestion, and interaction with aquaculture. Being associated with the Joint Graduate School allows Darren to interact with some amazing students and Darren takes great pride in helping with their development as future leaders.  

Sally Watson is Marine Geophysicist whose research focuses on understanding the dynamics of offshore geological processes over a range of time-scales from the continental shelf to the deep-ocean.  

She works with various geological and geophysical datasets including bathymetry, seafloor and water column backscatter, sub-bottom profiler data, and seismic reflection data to investigate the form, structure, subsurface and nature of the seafloor. 

“I basically study the ocean floor. I investigate why it looks the way it does, what it’s made of, how it formed, and what sort of processes change it over time - including things like volcanoes, earthquakes, ocean currents, and even human activities).”

My day-to-day can change a lot. Sometimes I am in the office analysing datasets and writing papers, and other days I can be out in the field collecting new data, or in the lab processing samples. I work 20% with the University of Auckland and 80% with NIWA, in Wellington, so I’m often travelling between places to work with different people. 

Craig is a physical oceanographer with a focus on environmental fluid mechanics in extreme environments. He holds a joint position as Associate Professor in Physics at the University of Auckland and is a Programme Leader (PL) in the Coasts and Oceans Centre.

He uses novel observational techniques to make discoveries about how the ocean works - primarily around how turbulence, stratification and waves interact and how entities react/behave/exist in such fluid environments.

He has been PL on four Marsden Fund projects, was the past Chair of the Aotearoa Wave and Tidal Energy Association as well as a past President of the NZ Association of Scientists and has a strong interest in promoting environmental physics to the public. He is PL on a seven-year Antarctic oceanography project funded by the Antarctic Science Platform.