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Graham J.Edgar

Graham J Edgar is most commonly known for his book Australian Marine Life, this book is commonly used by Australian marine biologist. Graham was awarded his BSc degree from Sydney University. Followed by his Honours and a PhD at the University in Tasmania.

Graham has helped to organize a marine park in the Galapagos Islands because of all the species there that can not be found in any other places in the world. He also wanted to make a limit on how many sea cucumbers you can catch. While he was doing so he had to persuade the sea cucumber fishermen that this was the right thing to do. The fishermen did not think it was right that they were not allowed to fish for sea cucumber in this area and they could only catch a few. The fishermen kidnaped and threatened to kill some threatened species of tortoises. Finally the fishermen came to their senses and realized this was actually a very smart idea, so it was all-fine in the end.

In 2007 Graham received the only CER (Commonwealth Environment Research) given to him for his very outside the box idea of training volunteer divers to collect data, which a team of scientific divers would never accomplish in such a small amount of time. He now has 150 divers collecting data from over 1100 sites around Australia. He has got all the money and got out all the advertisements he needed with the help of the Reef Life Survey Foundation in Australia.

One of the best things Graham has done for Australia is the establishment of marine sanctuaries. He got this idea after setting one up in the Galapagos Islands. He thought that since Australia has such a divers marine ecosystem and given we live on the sea and also how widely known for our Great Barrier Reef that we should have marine sanctuaries to protect all this. In 1998 marine sanctuaries were implemented into Australia there are now 44 marine sanctuaries in Australia. Other countries have followed in our footsteps.