With expertise in fish biology, fisheries bycatch mitigation, and fish conservation, Dr Kyne focuses on the collection of life history and ecological information to guide the management and conservation of biodiversity and assess population status and extinction risk.
Dr Kyne’s research program aims to fill knowledge gaps impeding effective conservation and management of threatened species as well as data deficient species. Sharks and their relatives (rays and ghost sharks) have a high level of global extinction risk with one-third of species threatened with extinction. This group is the focus of Dr Kyne’s research with field based research on threatened sawfishes and river sharks, and extinction risk assessments of a wide variety of species at the national, regional, and global level. Further research activities are aimed at monitoring and managing threatened shorebird and terrestrial bird species.
Knowledge gaps and data deficiency remain high in northern Australian and regional sharks and rays and potential projects would aim to address this issue while being focused on outcomes for management and conservation.
Dr Kyne has supervised several PhD students to completion on projects including the benefits and impacts of housing threatened species in aquarium, tropical euryhaline shark trophic ecology, and tropical ray ecology.