Peter L. Harrison

Peter L. Harrison is an Australian marine biologist, ecologist, and a Professor at Southern Cross University, Australia, as well as the founding director of the Marine Ecology Research Centre. His specialty is coral reproduction ecology and larval restoration.

Coral spawning research
While conducting his PhD at James Cook University in Townsville in 1981, Harrison worked with a small group of other researchers that first discovered Mass Coral Spawning. This occurred after the monitoring of hundreds of corals and during night dives at Magnetic Island, where the team observed millions of coral sperm and eggs filling the waters around them in a synchronised mass multi-species spawning event. This discovery was the first scientific documentation of a mass coral spawning event. Three years later, in 1984, Harrison and the team published their first paper on the occurrence. One of his primary research focuses on coral and reef restoration and developing larger-scale coral larval restoration projects. This work aims to use millions of coral larvae to restore damaged reefs in the Philippines and on the Great Barrier Reef.

Recognition
Harrison and the team were awarded a Eureka Prize for Environmental Research in 1992 for their discovery of mass coral spawning on the Great Barrier Reef. Harrison led a United Nations funded mission to assess the impacts of the first Gulf War on the coral reefs of Kuwait, and has a new coral species discovered in the Arabian Gulf named after him (Porites Harrisoni). Peter has been appointed to the Australian Government’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee, serving on the committee from 2005 to 2015. A sculpture of Peter Harrison was created by Jason deCaires Taylor for the Museum of Underwater Art as part of the Ocean Sentinels above the surface exhibition in 2022.

Publications
Harrison has published over 200 scientific research papers, reports and books. His work has been cited almost 15,000 times.