Tom Cresswell loves prawns, but not for the reason you think. He’s been working with these swimming crustaceans to better understand the impact of mining on a tropical river in Papua New Guinea.
Tom’s an Aquatic Ecosystems Scientist at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) at Lucas Heights in the Sutherland Shire whose environmental research is helping to protect aquatic ecosystems.
He recently submitted his PhD thesis, which was conducted with CSIRO Land and Water, also based at Lucas Heights, under the supervision of Dr. Stuart Simpson at CSIRO, Dr. Ross Smith of Hydrobiology, Brisbane, and Prof. Dayanthi Nugegoda from RMIT University, Melbourne.
It was this PhD that took him to the wilderness of PNG to study these prawns and encouraged Tom to engage in a collaborative study between ANSTO and CSIRO.
Prawns might seem like an unusual tool for science, but they’ve played a vital role in analysing the impact of industrial waste emitted from the gold mine into the Strickland River, which is home to a number of tribes and stretches 900 km through the Western Province of PNG.
“We look for living organisms, which we call bio-monitors that can help us identify chemicals in the environment.
It was here that his working relationship started with prawns.
“The prawns are one of the only species that can survive in one of the murkiest rivers in the world.”
Tom began testing to see how much metals were in the bodies of the prawns and whether it was coming from the mine.
To get a better insight into how the metals are taken up by the prawns, Tom modelled local prawn species at ANSTO’s labs using radioisotopes of cadmium and measured how it travelled through their bodies with a gamma spectrometer.
The research showed just how complex the river system actually was, but has not demonstrated any negative impact from the mine’s operations.
“The levels we picked up in our research were all below health guidelines in terms of eating prawns and toxicology to the prawns as well.”
Tom is passionate about helping to preserve these valuable water resources. It’s a dream come true for someone who lived by the ocean most of his life. Tom developed an interest in marine science after doing some of his schooling in Florida where he did a class in oceanography.
“For one subject, I got to swim with manatees and from that day on I was hooked!”
Having moved to Australia four years ago, and now working at ANSTO, he gets to live out his dream every day.
Watch Tom as he takes the rapid research challenge to explain his research in 60 seconds (below).