Blue Planet Marine is a leading environmental science, research and consulting organisation providing expert services in the New Zealand, Australian, Asian, South Pacific and Antarctic marine environments.
We help organisations understand and manage the impact of human activity on marine mammals and other marine megafauna. We do this via research, monitoring, mitigation, reports, logistical support and training. Our clients span a variety of sectors – government, resource, research, and NGO – and all are seeking to balance the use of the marine environment with its management and conservation for a sustainable future.
Blue Planet Marine's focus is to supply our clients with robust, relevant, objective, reliable, and independent data, service and advice upon which informed management decisions can be made and actions taken. Our aim is to become a trusted advisor to all our clients.
The Blue Planet Marine Team
Blue Planet Marine has a small base of employees that we augment on a project-by-project basis using Associates of Blue Planet Marine or independent contractors. We can do this because we have spent more than 25 years establishing strong, professional relationships with reputable experts around the world.
This resource model allows flexibility and responsiveness in a changing market and enables Blue Planet Marine to provide the specialist skills required by our clients – even if we do not have them in-house. It allows us to quickly scale-up or -down our teams as required. It also provides a variety of perspectives and increases significantly the professional connections and ideas that we can bring to the table.
A list of publications by the Blue Planet Marine team can be found here
Dr David Paton / Managing Director (ACT)
Project Manager, marine mammal, turtle and seabird biologist and ecologist with over thirty-five years’ experience throughout Australia, the South Pacific, Southern Ocean (Antarctic waters), USA and Canada.
Tim Phillips / General Manager (Qld)
With over 30 years of experience within the Commercial/Corporate Finance industry across Europe, the Americas and Australasia, Tim has advised and funded a broad spectrum of businesses going through event driven, strategic change. Tim is responsible for all ongoing operations within BPM and is focused upon identifying & driving improvements across all divisions of the wider organisation.
Dr Simon Childerhouse / Principal Scientist & Country Manager (NZ)
Simon has worked as a marine mammal ecologist for more than 25 years in Australia, Antarctica, New Zealand, USA, Canada and the South Pacific. His work has included pure and applied marine research, leading and project managing large scale, international research projects, publishing across a broad range of marine research, lecturing and teaching at various universities, representation of Australian and New Zealand Governments at international forums, development of national and international policy and strategic documents, and delivering applied and practical solutions to challenging marine conservation and resource-utilisation issues.
Sarah Laverick BSc (Hons), MFAB / Marine Scientist (NSW)
Sarah has a BSc (Hons) in Marine Freshwater and Antarctic Biology. She has over 20 years' experience with marine mammal research in all its facets. She is experienced in managing large-scale logistic projects including several Antarctic research voyages as Project Manager and Deputy Voyage Leader. Sarah also has experience with marine mammal stranding, oil spill response and cetacean entanglement response and monitoring.