Dr. Andrew Negri 

Australian Institute of Marine Science 

Andrew is a coral reef ecotoxicologist, working with a wide range of contaminants including hydrocarbons, metals, pesticides and sediments. His research has focused recently on modelling oil toxicity and developing methods to assess the combined impacts of pollution and climate change on corals. His research is primarily strategic, providing regulators, management and industry with information to develop, improve or inform guidelines and risk analyses.

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​Dr. Jimmy Seow

Jimmy Seow, Ph.D., is director of Environ Pty Ltd., Australia. Dr. Seow is a recognized PFAS subject matter expert and a member of the U.S. Green Science Policy Institute’s PFAS subject matter experts’ group, consisting of members from the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and the European Union.

 

Dr. Seow has also published several papers and reports on PFAS and firefighting foam and presented on PFAS and firefighting foam at various forums in Australia and internationally.

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Nigel Holmes

Queensland Dept of Environment and Science

Nigel Holmes is Principal Advisor Incident Management for the Queensland Department of Environment and Science.  
His role is as a Queensland-wide resource advising on policy, standards, risk assessment and responding to incidents involving a diversity of hazardous materials as well as providing support for interstate and overseas incident response. Nigel has over 30 years’ multi-disciplinary experience in consulting and government roles across environmental and contamination assessment, regulation and policy development for land, marine, freshwater and groundwater pollution assessment, oil spills, chemical spills, fires, firefighting foam, industry licensing, remediation, aquaculture and geotechnical assessment.
Since 2007 Nigel has been an oil and chemical spill responder for Queensland with experience across a number of maritime emergencies. His first involvement in a large-scale oil spill was associated with the wreck of the Sanko Harvest near Esperance in 1991 undertaking assessments of the impacts on the environment and fisheries.

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David Blondeau- Patissier

CSIRO 

David Blondeau-Patissier is a research scientist within the CSIRO Aquatic Remote Sensing team. Based in Brisbane, David™s research focuses on coastal water quality monitoring, from the detection of algal blooms to oil spills, using both satellite imagery and field observations. The CSIRO Aquatic Remote Sensing team is located in Canberra and Brisbane. The team works on state (ACT, Qld), national and international research projects, collaborating with a large network of universities and agencies, and delivering products across various fields that include citizen science, bathymetry and habitat mapping, assessment of inland and coastal aquatic ecosystems (e.g., water quality monitoring, oil spills detection). 

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Wayne O' Brien

DIrector - Resilient Solutions

With a background in marine engineering, Wayne came ashore from the Royal New Zealand Navy in 1996 to join the Maritime Safety Authority of New Zealand. He was one of the core team responsible for the development of New Zealand’s Marine Pollution Response Capability.

 

Following a love of travel, gained during his time in the Navy, Wayne departed New Zealand’s fair shores in 2001 and has developed and managed emergency response centres in Nigeria, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Egypt, UAE, Iraq and Singapore. During this time Wayne has responded to marine oil spills in many of those regions with key experiences including; managing the industry response to the Prestige in Spain the Tasman Spirit in Pakistan and Subject Matter Expert for offshore response operations in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida during the Macondo 252 response. Working across a broad spectrum of the response industry, Wayne has responded to natural disasters in the Pacific region, managed fire and hazmat operations in the Middle East, oil pipeline ruptures in the Caucus mountains and salvage operations in Africa, including the de-oiling of a World War 2 RFA tanker sunk by U-Boat off the coast of St Helena

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Mikaela Nordborg

Australian Institute of Marine Science 

Mikaela is a marine ecotoxicologist and ecologist with experience investigating the effects of both local and global pressures on marine invertebrates from various habitats. Over the last six years her research has focused on the effects of petroleum hydrocarbons towards tropical corals, and the impacts of tropical environmental conditions on oil toxicity. She has been involved in developing new exposure systems for tropical oil toxicity research and has lead work on identifying coral life stages and endpoints that are sensitive to oil exposure, deriving species-specific sensitivity constants for tropical corals and applying them in predictive toxicity modelling which accounts for tropical light conditions.

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Glen McDermott

Maritime Environmental Emergency Response Incident Controller – Department of Transport

Glen McDermott is the manager of the Department of Transport’s Maritime Environmental Emergency Response (MEER) Team. Since first joining the department in 2018 Glen has fulfilled operational, logistics, incident control and advisory or management positions in both preparedness for and actual responses to Marine Oil Pollution incidents in WA and abroad. 

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Key incidents he has been involved in include the MV Nauma Oil Spill in Fremantle Port in 2019, the MV Solomon Trader Oil Spill, in support of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority in 2019, and the Ya Tai 2 Oil Spill in Geraldton Port in 2021. 

Glen has also been involved in a myriad of other incidents including the aftermath of the impact of Cyclone Damien in the Dampier Archipelago in 2020, the management of the Oil Spill Risk associated with the Marine Transport Emergency for the MV Barkly Pearl in Geraldton and the Abrolhos Islands across late 2020 and early 2021, and the Department of Transport’s response to Cyclone Seroja and its impacts on Coastal Facilities in Carnarvon, Kalbarri and Geraldton in 2021.

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Glen’s experience with the Department of Transport, supplemented by his previous career of over a decade of service as a Military Engineer and Intelligence Officer in the Australian Army means he has a wealth of knowledge on the management of Maritime Environmental Emergencies within WA. This includes both in the development and management of capability in preparedness for emergencies and incidents, but also in the control and coordination of those emergencies and incidents and how they can be resolved in the interests of the WA Community, Environment and Economy.

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