Benjamin JONES

I am the Chief Conservation Officer at Project Seagrass, an organisation I co-founded in 2013 after seeing need for greater science-based conservation action for seagrass meadows globally. I am ex-president of the World Seagrass Association, and Co-Chair of Seagrass Breakthrough Expert Group, spearheaded by CMS and the UN Climate Change High-Level Champions.

As an interdisciplinary scientist, I interrogate the links between biodiversity and people using seagrass meadows as a model social-ecological system. I design, lead and implement research and conservation programmes focused on these links to provide evidence for policy change across the globe, giving priority to seagrass meadows for the services they provide in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals. 

I have been working with seagrass ecosystems for over 13 years and conducted seagrass associated research and conservation work across the globe. As a result, my research is broad, including applications of local knowledge to conserve and manage seagrass associated recreational fisheries in the Caribbean, understanding how poverty and food-insecurity drive seagrass associated fisheries across the Indo-Pacific, and exploring the social-ecological science needed to restore seagrass meadows in Northern Europe.