Marine Research on the southern African margin

The South African coast provides essential economic, social and ecological services, which provide a foundation for the lives of millions of South Africans. These services must be monitored and modelled in order to understand and ultimately maintain their functionality.

Our aim is to create a research framework that supports increased human capacity, integrated coastal management, and developing cutting-edge technologies. MARIS will contribute to this through national and international collaborative efforts, providing innovative solutions to the interdisciplinary problems associated with coastal research, linking together social, science and technology. 

Areas of research:

• Predictive models of the coastal ocean environment in the Southern African seas;
• Decision-support for management of activities in complex adaptive marine social-ecological systems of the Benguela; 
• Models that integrate an ecosystem-level understanding of changes in marine systems of the south and can serve as tools for testing alternative management and adaptation strategies;   
• Methodology of inter- and transdisciplinary marine systems research in southern Africa across the natural and social sciences, humanities and a variety of non-academic parties interested in, or affected by, management decisions.  
• Exploration of biodiversity patterns and development of oceanographic process models for the South African deep sea utilizing innovative technology and low-cost instrumentation compatible with our existing infrastructure. 

Research Coordinators: Prof Astrid Jarre, Dr Emma Rocke, Dr Louise Gammage, Dr Natasha Karenyi and Prof Lynne Shannon.