Professor Gretta Pecl

Professor of Marine Ecology at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies and Director of the Centre for Marine Socioecology, University of Tasmania

2022 TAS Australian of the Year Nominee

Marine ecologist Professor Gretta Pecl has provided a solution to a global problem in the fight against climate change. With oceans so vast, it’s an enormous task to collect enough data to demonstrate the impacts of climate change. And without this information, it’s hard to make positive change.

To help overcome this problem, Gretta enlisted the help of thousands of recreational fishers, scuba divers, boaters and naturalists. From their input, she founded Redmap – the Range Extension Database and Mapping Project – a platform they could use to report species that are outside their normal geographic distribution.

For her work, Gretta has been ranked 178th on the Reuters Hot List of ‘1,000 most influential climate scientists’. She also ranked in the top 20 women scientists in the same list.

In addition, Gretta is passionate about science communication and women’s participation in science. She’s won multiple national and international awards for both scientific research and scientific communication.