Dr. Colin Simpfendorfer

Dr. Colin Simpfendorfer is the Director of the Centre for Sustainable Tropical Fisheries and Aquaculture at James Cook University in Australia.

Prior to this position, he was a Senior Scientist at Mote Marine Laboratory’s Center for Shark Research until. He focuses his research on population biology, especially in relation to shark fisheries and shark conservation. He received his B.Sc. from James Cook University, Queensland, Australia. After completing his undergraduate degree he took a position teaching Zoology at James Cook University and concurrently worked on his Ph.D. degree. His Ph.D. research focused on the life history the Australian sharpnose shark, a common inshore species in northern Australia. He completed his Ph.D. in 1993 and then returned to his home town of Perth to work for the Fisheries Department of Western Australia, leading a research team investigating the status of commercially fished shark populations. In 1998 he moved to Florida where he continued his research on the population biology of sharks. His projects there included research on the conservation biology of sawfish, stock assessment of commercially important shark species in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, and satellite tracking of large coastal sharks. He is an active member of the World Conservation Union’s Shark Specialist Group, and in 2003 was appointed as the Leader of the U.S. Smalltooth Sawfish Recovery Planning Team.