Meet the Trustees

Mayor Celia Wade-Brown, Patron

Celia has been living in the area, overlooking the Marine Reserve since 1983 and has been a City Councillor since 1994 and is now Mayor of Wellington. Her political career in Wellington was sparked by leading a beach litter clean-up in Island Bay in 1992. She is still collecting rubbish from beaches and island in 2011!

Celia is a keen kayaker, snorkeller, diver and walker along the reserve. She has been a strong supporter for the marine reserve – she led a Council delegation to Minister of Fisheries, for example, and was an instigator of the Marine Bioblitz in 2007.

Celia has seen the potential of the reserve (education, renaissance of species) and threats (over-harvesting, individual pollution due to oil or paint, widespread run-off and sewage issues), partly due to taking up scuba diving in 2006 and seeing the richness of the sea-life in the area. She was an inaugural Trustee of the Friends and is now Patron.of the Trust.

Rochelle Finlay (Chair)

Rochelle is a keen diver and part owner of The Dive Guys. She has a background in research in Environmental microbiology. She currently is a senior manager within research funding  at Victoria University. Part of her role is to work on and enhance strategies within this field at Vic. These coupled with her love of the South Coast will make her an asset to the trust.

Murray Hosking

After a career in forestry and conservation in senior management positions, Murray was the marine reserve facilitator in DOC from 2001 to 2009 and was directly involved in the end stages of the Taputeranga marine reserve, amongst many others. He was made a Companion of the Queen’s Service Order (QSO) in 2009 for services to conservation.

Murray aspires to see Taputeranga demonstrate the benefits of marine protection for the local community for education, diving, recreation and business. He expects that a return to natural levels of biota in the reserve will in time be a draw card for science, education, tourism and public interest to match that of the Karori Sanctuary and MatiuSomes.

Colin Ryder (Treasurer/ Secretary)

Colin has had more than twenty years experience in project managing and resourcing conservation projects in the Wellington region; including eradication of mice on Mana Island (at the time the largest rodent eradication in the world and still one of the largest involving mice); convenor of Wellington South Coast Marine Reserves coalition which applied for the Taputeranga marine reserve; and translocations of several bird, reptile, invertebrate and rare plants species to Mana Island.

He believes that that the Marine Reserve has the potential to be a showcase for marine conservation generally but this will depend, to a large degree, on the buy-in and active involvement of the community.

Dr Malcolm Francis

Malcolm is a Principal Scientist at NIWA and is one of New Zealand’s foremost experts in fish. He has a wide interest in shallow demersal and reef species, as well as oceanic pelagics and all aspects of fish distribution, biogeography, reproduction (especially sharks), age and growth, and recruitment. These are all components of the knowledge which is essential to ensure that fish management is placed on as sustainable a basis as possible.

Besides being a widely published researcher and author, Malcolm has taken a particular interest in great white sharks, assisting in a greater knowledge and understanding of this much-maligned species. Malcolm is a keen professional and recreational diver, underwater photographer, and is a supporter of marine protected areas and Taputeranga Marine Reserve in particular.

Stephen Journee

Steve is probably always happiest when he is in the water – salt rather than hot! Steve is a PADI Dive Instructor and is a principal ‘guy’ at The Dive Guys, Hataitai, and is a strong advocate for all of the great dive spots around Wellington Harbour and the South Coast. Steve is a keen photographer, both above and below water – check out the cute little seahorse with a Mohawk on the Trust’s Facebook page. That was one of Steve’s winners!

He has a passion about cleaning up the wastes and debris left behind on seashore and seabed, and has led a number of projects to clean up around the inner harbour and wharves. He is even more passionate about encouraging people not to let their rubbish enter the coastal and marine environment in the first place.

Sophie Mormede

Sophie fell in water when she was little. She was a competitive swimmer, and then graduated to scuba-diving and was a lifeguard for years. She spends as much time as she can underwater, and is still looking for the surgeon who will give her gills. After living in four different countries in ten years, she now calls Wellington home. How many other places in the world can you access such wonderful diving straight after work? She loves diving the Wellington South Coast and harbour for their richness, diversity and accessibility.

 When she’s not underwater she works at NIWA as a fisheries modeller, investigating the status of New Zealand fish stocks and their ecosystem. She works on providing some of the science which informs the fisheries management system. It mainly involves mathematical computer work in an office. Sometimes she’s lucky enough to get on research voyages onboard the New Zealand Research Vessel Tangaroa, when she finally works with real fish rather than pretend fish.

Julian Hodge

Come on Jules I need some bites for this page…

Zoe Studd

Zoe is the newest trustee of the FoTMR. She is from Wellington originally and over the years has lived all along the south coast. Her love of the ocean grew from snorkelling trips with her dad as a girl – and her fascination with the creatures and things she discovered.  She now shares that with school students in Wellington as the regional coooordinator of the Experiencing Marine Reserves programme (EMR).

Each summer EMR takes school students out snorkelling into the Taputernage Marine reserve and helps them develop an understanding and appreciation for marine biodiversity, and the importance of marine conservation in New Zealand.  Zoe originally trained as dive instructor in Kaikoura and worked there, and in Samoa, before going on to do her studies in Marine Science and Management in Australia.

 This was followed by 4 years in the public service in New Zealand and Australia in the environmental policy field.   Ready for a new challenge, she is now a freshly qualified teacher and works part time at Miramar South School. Her role as coordinator of the EMR programme sees her visitng schools, struggling to squeeze kids into 7mm wetsuits and convincing them into the chilly waters of Island Bay during summer. Luckily this isn’t too much of a challenge and getting them back out always seems to be the trickiest part.

She is really excited about being a trustee and sees the objectives of the Friends and EMR as one and the same- getting people passionate about the Taputeranga Marine reserve – and caring for it into the future.