The Ocean Sunfishes: Evolution, Biology and Conservation

Dr. Tierney M. Thys is a Research Associate at the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, California USA. She has been captivated by the molids since the 1990s and was a member of the first team to successfully satellite tag Mola mola in the wild. She has research sites in South America and California and runs www.oceansunfish.org and the Adopt a Sunfish Project. Dr. Thys received her B.A. from Brown University and Ph.D. from Duke University.

Dr. Graeme C. Hays is the Alfred Deakin Professor of Marine Science at Deakin University, Australia. He has a long-standing interest in the movements and ecology of marine megafauna, pioneering the use of satellite tracking in the early 1990s, a technique that is now very widely used across studies with marine mammals, birds, reptiles and fish. Since encountering ocean sunfish during fieldwork on the west coast of Ireland, he has been fascinated by these extraordinary fish.

Dr. Jonathan D.R. Houghton is a Senior Lecturer in Marine Biology (i.e. Associate Professor) based at Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland. His lab group focuses on the movement and foraging ecology of pelagic species from leatherback sea turtles, basking sharks and ocean sunfish through to deep oceanic jellyfish. These efforts center on marine conservation across Europe, the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and the Galápagos Islands.