Taylor Simpkins

Taylor is a marine biologist and PhD candidate at the University of Western Australia. She is from California, where she grew up diving in the giant kelp forests of the Channel Islands. She was involved in research from a young age, starting a long-term monitoring program on plastic pollution in southern California (2001-2012) then working as an AAUS scientific diver following her bachelor's studies in Marine Science from the University of San Diego.

After moving to Australia in 2014, Taylor shifted focus from working in temperate systems to monitoring coral health on the Great Barrier Reef. This work led to her research at the University of Western Australia where studied the chemistry of annual growth bands within coral skeletons to reconstruct past ocean temperatures. She's worked on research expeditions from the most remote stretches of the Great Barrier Reef to the far reaches of the Indian Ocean's deep sea. Taylor has recently come full circle back into the field of kelp forest ecology, and her current research in Australia examines the role of kelp forests in ocean-based carbon sequestration.