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Dr. Wes Tunnell Profile
Name: Dr.Wes Tunnell
Title: Aquatic biologist and Director of Texas A&M's Center for Coastal Studies
Job Description: Dr. John W. Tunnell, Jr., Director of the Center for Coastal Studies and Professor of Biology at TAMU-CC, is a marine biologist who has conducted research in areas as diverse as fossilized vertebrates from the seabed, colonial nesting seabirds, molluscan ecology, and coastal community ecology for the past 25 years, but he has specialized in coral reef ecology. He has performed reef studies in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, Persian Gulf and has visited reefs in French Polynesia, Guam, Palau, Australia, Honduras, Panama and the Netherland Antillies. He has produced numerous technical reports and published papers on coral reef organisms, ecology, and environmental problems. He published a chapter as co-author in the 1974 book on the biota of the Flower Garden reefs. In addition to qualitative reef survey methods, he has utilized various non-destructive, quantitative sampling techniques in his reef research, ranging from quadrats and line transects to the newer photographic techniques.
Dr. Tunnell has been involved in studying the organisms and ecology of the southwestern Gulf of Mexico coral reefs since 1973, and he has taught a Coral Reef Ecology class including a field trip to these Veracruz reefs since 1976. In addition to Dr. Tunnell's Ph.D. dissertation on these reefs, he has directed eight M.S. thesis projects and one Ph.D. dissertation on the Veracruz reefs. He has complied a checklist of over 1400 organisms from the Veracruz reefs and has monitored the environmental impact of nature and man to these reefs since 1973.
Dr. Tunnell is a Fellow in the Texas Academy of Sciences, was a Fulbright Scholar studying coral reefs of the Yucatán Peninsula for one year during 1985-86, and most recently was named Regent's Professor by the Texas A&M University System.
Since starting at TAMU-CC, Dr. Tunnell has helped organize and establish the Biology MS Degree Program, the Geology BS Degree Program, the BS and MS Environmental Science Program, the Center for Coastal Studies and Natural Resources Center.
Interviews
Chat with Students
Links
Associate Director, Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies
TAMU-CC Department of Physical & Life Sciences
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