After moving from Scotland to Australia in 2006, I developed a deep passion for Australia’s diverse and unique marine ecosystems. This led me to undertake a degree in marine science at UWA. I completed my honours project studying seagrass biogeochemistry in the Shark Bay World Heritage Area. I followed this with my PhD research, which investigated the role of organic matter and microbial decomposition in sustaining the seagrass meadows in Shark Bay, an extremely nutrient poor environment.

• Microbial ecology in seagrass sediments
• Interactions of sediment health on seagrasses
• Biogeochemistry in marine ecosystems - cycling of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur
• Synergistic impacts of climate change stressors on marine primary producers
• Thresholds for internal aeration and sulfide intrusion in seagrasses
• Improving monitoring and management of benthic primary producers under a changing climate

• Fraser MW, Kendrick GA, Rule M (2016) Long-term monitoring of seagrass communities on behalf of the Cockburn Sound Management Council WAMSI.
• Fraser MW, Kendrick GA (2016) Cause Effect Pathway for Seagrass Diebacks in Naval Waters and Across Cockburn Sound, Aurecon Australasia (Dept. of Defence).
• Olsen Y, Gustafsson C, Hovey R, Statton J, Fraser MW (2016) The relationship between plant functional traits and primary production in temperate seagrass meadows, UWA Research Collaboration Award.
• Fraser MW, Kendrick GA (2016) Belowground drivers of seagrass decline in Cockburn Sound, Fremantle Ports.
• GA Kendrick, Fraser MW (2015) Drivers of seagrass decline in Cockburn and Warnbro Sounds’, Department of Environment Regulation, Western Australia.
• Recipient of Hodgkin Trust Scholarship, Australian Geographic Bayerboost Grant, Freemasons Postgraduate Scholarship & Ray Hart Memorial Scholarship during PhD.

In 2013 I completed the Postgraduate Teaching Internship, run by the Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning, designed to provide postgraduate students with a solid foundation for future teaching of undergraduate classes. During this Internship I designed the Cottesloe Ecosystem Research Project, which aimed to provide undergraduate marine science students with an authentic field exercise that provided valuable data for the monitoring of Cottesloe Fish Habitat Protection Area. I have also co-supervised 1 Honours and 1 Masters student. Previously, I have ran tutorials and lectured in the following subjects:
• Marine Systems (formally Introduction to Marine Science)
• Field Techniques in Marine Science
• Ecological Processes

I am a marine ecologist whose primary research focusses on interactions between marine primary producers and their environment. I am specifically interested in how seagrass health is impacted by their surrounding sediments, including associated microbial communities. I am also interested in understanding the bottom up impacts of declines in marine primary producers related to climate change. I address these research areas with a range of different methodologies - using molecular techniques, stable isotopes, nuclear magnetic resonance, O2 and H2S microsensors, in both controlled tank systems and in large scale field experiments. My future research aims to allow belowground conditions to be modelled into existing seagrass management and monitoring programs, to better understand and protect against sudden seagrass diebacks.