Honours and masters projects at IMAS

Are you interested in becoming a highly trained scientist, researcher, or leader in academic institutions, industry, government and communities across the world?

At IMAS we deliver exciting, innovative, relevant, globally distinctive, practical and first-class education programs.

Positioned at the gateway to the Southern Ocean and Antarctica and with collaborations and partners with the world's leading scientific institutions, IMAS can provide the next step in your career.

If you are interested in conducting postgraduate research we have a number of pre-approved honours and masters projects.

Available projects

Ecology and biodiversity

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Tasmania’s coastal ecosystems including estuaries, bays, lagoons as well as tidal rivers and streams, provide important habitats for a wide variety of fishes, including many of ecologically significance as well as those targeted by recreational and commercial fishers.

This study will sample a representative subset of coastal sites across Tasmania to provide a contemporary state-wide assessment of Tasmania’s coastal fish communities. Fish sampling will involve use of seine nets from shore and the associated data will enable quantification of species distributions, community composition, and biodiversity. Additional environmental data will also be used to provide insights into the potential drivers of spatial variability (e.g. temperature, land-use, urbanisation, habitat type/condition).

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Brown seaweed in the order Fucales form important habitat throughout southern Australia, supporting diverse epifaunal assemblages and high secondary production. Generally, little is known about the ecology of these species and how the critical early life-cycle stages are impacted by warming, including marine heatwaves. Recent research at IMAS on one species of Fucales, bull kelp (Durvillaea), suggests they may be especially susceptible to warming, with fertilisation only occurring at low temperatures and limited to a narrow thermal range.

This project will test the thermal vulnerability of multiple Fucales species to warming by undertaking field surveys of their reproduction combined with lab experiments testing how fertilisation and early growth are impacted by warming. This project will provide new insights into the vulnerability of these key habitat-forming species informing their restoration and/or conservation.

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Kelp forests are disappearing worldwide as climate change drives increasingly frequent and intense marine heatwaves. While the impacts on adult kelp are well known, the microscopic life stages that enable kelp forests to recover after disturbance remain largely unexplored.
Recent studies have demonstrated that seaweeds living in the understory of kelp forests can harbor kelp gametophytes - analogous to a seed bank - enabling kelp gametophytes to lie dormant within other seaweeds for months at a time, until conditions are suitable for their development and recruitment to the reef. It is hypothesised that this mutualism has evolved to benefit both kelp forest recovery following disturbance and the protection of understory seaweed hosts. However, climate change and marine heatwaves specifically, are changing the nature of disturbance events on reefs, with thermal stress now a leading cause of kelp population declines. This raises questions about the thermal tolerance of understorey host species and indeed kelp gametophytes themselves, and whether they can remain viable under marine heatwave conditions to enable kelp forest recovery post disturbance.
With an extreme El Niño predicted this summer, sea temperatures may exceed the thermal limited of many kelp species, creating conditions for a natural experiment to test these questions.  Building on recently developed methods that detect microscopic kelp stages associated with understorey red seaweeds, this project will investigate how heat stress affects the hidden propagule bank and the host species they rely on.

The student will combine field collections / observations and laboratory culture techniques to quantify the abundance and survival of kelp propagules before, during and after this summers anticipated marine heatwave.  The project will provide new insights into the resilience of kelp forests under climate change and help inform future restoration and conservation strategies.
This is an opportunity to contribute to a timely research question with direct relevance to the future of Australia's temperate reefs.

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Local governments are on the front line of climate change. Impacts occur locally, and communities increasingly expect councils to lead adaptation efforts. Tasmania's coastal councils face growing exposure to climate-related coastal hazards, yet their adaptive capacity varies considerably.

Factors influencing capacity include resources, leadership, institutional arrangements, access to knowledge, and collaborative networks. While barriers and enablers of climate adaptation in Australian local government are well documented, less is known about how regional Tasmanian coastal councils understand and prioritise the governance, capacity, and knowledge needs required to strengthen preparedness for coastal hazards.

In response, Tasmanian coastal councils, the Local Government Association of Tasmania (LGAT), and the Tasmanian Climate Change Office (TCCO) are collaborating through the Coastal Hazard Resilience Planning Project (CHRPP) to strengthen coastal hazard planning and governance across the state.

Using a qualitative case study approach informed by adaptive capacity theory, this project examines the CHRPP and asks: How do coastal councils participating in the CHRPP understand their preparedness for coastal hazards, and what governance and research/knowledge needs do they identify as priorities for strengthening that preparedness?

The student will work within the CHRPP environment to identify priority governance, capacity, and research needs and explore how research partnerships can better support local decision-making and preparedness for coastal change. Governance refers to the institutional, organisational, and collaborative arrangements through which councils make decisions, access and apply knowledge, coordinate with other organisations, and mobilise resources. Findings will inform CHRPP implementation and local government understanding re planned relocation and managed retreat.

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Seagrass flowering, seed germination, and seed viability are strongly influenced by environmental conditions, particularly temperature, light availability, and salinity. Climate change is increasing the frequency, intensity, and duration of marine heatwaves, which may alter reproductive processes by advancing the onset of flowering, disrupting germination cues, and reducing seed resilience and viability. Understanding these responses is critical for predicting the capacity of seagrass meadows to recover from disturbance and for developing effective restoration strategies under future climate conditions.

This project will investigate how environmental drivers influence spatial and temporal variation in seagrass reproduction across intertidal and subtidal habitats. Using a four-year dataset of temperature, light, and rainfall, the study will examine changes in flowering phenology and germination timing at the Red Handfish habitat in Frederick Henry Bay.

Field data collected during the 2026-2027 summer flowering season will be used to assess how spatial variation in temperature and light influences flowering intensity, germination rates, and seed viability across six sites, including three sites in the Derwent Estuary and three sites in Frederick Henry Bay.

By linking environmental conditions with reproductive responses, the project will identify key drivers of seagrass recruitment and resilience. The findings will directly inform seagrass restoration and management initiatives in the Derwent Estuary and support habitat restoration efforts for the critically endangered Red Handfish by improving understanding of the ecological processes underpinning seagrass persistence and recovery.