Reef fish ecology, conservaton, and fisheries: the scientific legacy of Glenn Almany

Despite his career being cut tragically short, Glenn Almany was a world leader in the ecology, conservation, and management of coral-reef fishes. Completing his BS at San Francisco State in 1996, he entered Mark Hixon's lab at Oregon State with an NSF pre-doctoral fellowship. He completed his PhD in 2002, publishing 6 papers in top journals. Glenn's novel field experiments showed that prior residents have strong effects on subsequent colonization of patch reefs. With lab mate Michael Webster, he also explored the intense early post-settlement mortality suffered by reef fishes. Glenn received a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2003 to study at James Cook Univ, where he began work with Geoff Jones and colleagues on larval connectivity. He was instrumental in developing and applying new methods to track larval dispersal in pelagic spawning fishes, publishing a seminal paper in Science in 2007. A second postdoctoral fellowship with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies enabled Glenn to apply these methods to determine the fate of larvae from grouper spawning aggregations in PNG, where he worked closely with remote local communities. He received a prestigious ARC Future Fellowship in 2010, and in the space of only 4 years published 20 papers, focusing predominantly on marine reserve design, connectivity and conservation of tropical fisheries resources. This period of his career was some of his most ambitious in scale, leading to substantial engagement in developing regional management programs in support of local fisheries within PNG and the Solomons.