Gretta T. Pecl

Gretta Tatyana Pecl is an Australian marine ecologist, Australian Research Council Future Fellow, and the Director of the Centre for Marine Socioecology (CMS) at the University of Tasmania. Her work focuses on species and ecosystem responses to climate change, as well as using socioecological approaches to adapt natural resource management for climate change. She is on the editorial board of Springer Nature's Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries, and is a Subject Editor for Ecography.

Early life and education Pecl is from Tasmania. She earned her bachelor's degree at James Cook University in 1994, completing an undergraduate dissertation on the muscle structure and dynamics of Idiosepius pygmaeus. Pecl remained at James Cook University for her doctoral studies, earning a PhD in 2000. Her research continued into a Fisheries Research and Development Corporation and Australian Research Council postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Tasmania, looking at the movement of Sepioteuthis australis using acoustic location and trace element analysis. She has primarily investigated the warming waters off the coast of Tasmania. The project uses a team of scientists to verify submitted photographs, and can make people more aware of climate change as they notice repeated changes in their own environments. Redmap was awarded the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales Whitely Award in 2010.

In 2009, Pecl was awarded a Fulbright Program scholarship to join the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and study how climate change had impacted the red king crab. She has formed an International Global Marine Hotspots Network (GMHN) with colleagues to bring users and managers of the sea together. In 2015, Pecl was awarded an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship to study the physiological and ecological mechanisms that underpin the redistribution of species through marine systems. In 2017, Pecl studied how the redistribution of land and fresh water species due to climate change affects human health, wellbeing, and culture. These impacts include tourism, recreational fishing, and health threats such as malaria. and an associate editor for Citizen Science: Theory and Practice from 2016 to 2020. She was elected to the Australian Society for Fish Biology Hall of Fame in 2016. Pecl presents at a scientific conference in Hobart, Tasmania, in 2016. Pecl became the Director of the Centre for Marine Socioecology at the University of Tasmania in 2018. In 2021 she created the Future Seas initiative, which aims to encourage interdisciplinary scientific collaboration to improve society's capacity to manage ocean systems as part of the United Nations' Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.

Pecl was a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Sixth Assessment Report, responsible for the "Great Barrier Reef", "Oceans", "Tourism", "Marine food" and "Indigenous peoples" sections of the Australasian chapter, and the "Fisheries on the Move", "Indigenous knowledge & climate adaptation", and "Climate change & water borne disease" cross chapter boxes within the main report. The report is due to be released in 2022.

Citizen science is a key approach to Pecl's research, and she is heavily involved in science communication and engagement. Pecl has written three articles for The Conversation to communicate her research regarding species' range shifts, the effects of climate change on Australian fishery species, and citizen science. In 2020, Pecl helped develop an educational card game of Tasmanian marine species. She has been involved in numerous public outreach events to educate stakeholders and communities on the impacts of climate change.

Honours and recognition Pecl was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in the 2024 King's Birthday Honours for "significant service to science, particularly ecological research, and to tertiary education". She was inducted onto the Tasmanian Honour Roll of Women in 2025.

Selected publications Pecl, G., Ogier, E., Jennings, S., van Putten, I., Crawford, C., Fogarty, H., Frusher, S., Hobday, A. J., Keane, J., Lee, E., MacLeod, C., Mundy, C., Stuart-Smith, J., & Tracey, S. (2019). "Autonomous adaptation to climate-driven change in marine biodiversity in a global marine hotspot". Ambio, 48 (12): 1498–1515. doi.org/10.1007/s13280-019-01186-x Scheffers, B. R., & Pecl, G. (2019). Persecuting, protecting or ignoring biodiversity under climate change. Nature Climate Change, 9 (8): 581–586. doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0526-5 Pecl, G. T., Araújo, M. B., Bell, J. D., Blanchard, J., Bonebrake, T. C., Chen, I.-C., Clark, T. D., Colwell, R. K., Danielsen, F., Evengård, B., Falconi, L., Ferrier, S., Frusher, S., Garcia, R. A., Griffis, R. B., Hobday, A. J., Janion-Scheepers, C., Jarzyna, M. A., Jennings, S., Lenoir, J., Linnetved, H. I., Martin, V. Y., McCormack, P. C., McDonald, J., Mitchell, N. J., Mustonen, T.. Pandolfi, J. M., Pettorelli, N., Popova, E., Robinson, S. A., Scheffers, B. R., Shaw, J. D., Sorte, C. J. B., Strugnell, J. M., Sunday, J. M., Tuanmu, M.-N., Vergés, A., Villanueva, C., Wernberg, T., Wapstra, E., Williams, S. E. (2017). "Biodiversity redistribution under climate change: Impacts on ecosystems and human well-being". Science, 355 (6332). doi.org/10.1126/science.aai9214 Johnson, C. R., Banks, S. C., Barrett, N. S., Cazassus, F., Dunstan, P. K., Edgar, G. J., Frusher, S. D., Gardner, C., Haddon, M., Helidoniotis, F., Hill, K. L., Holbrook, N. J., Hosie, G. W., Last, P. R., Ling, S. D., Melbourne-Thomas, J., Miller, K., Pecl, G. T., Richardson, A. J., Ridgway, K. R., Rintoul, S. R., Ritz, D. A., Ross, D. J., Sanderson, J. C., Shepherd, S. A., Swadling, K. M., Taw, N. (2011). "Climate change cascades: Shifts in oceanography, species’ ranges and subtidal marine community dynamics in eastern Tasmania". Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, 400 (1–2): 17–32. doi.org/10.1016/j.jembe.2011.02.032 Last, P. R., White, W. T., Gledhill, D. C., Hobday, A. J., Brown, R., Edgar, G. J., & Pecl, G. (2011). "Long-term shifts in abundance and distribution of a temperate fish fauna: A response to climate change and fishing practices". Global Ecology and Biogeography, 20 (1): 58–72. doi.org/10.1111/j.1466-8238.2010.00575.x

Personal life Gretta Pecl is separated with two children. She is on the advisory board of aKIDemic life, a free resource hub for academics with caring responsibilities.