John W. McManus, PhD. is a Professor of Marine Biology and Ecology at the Rosenstiel School of the University of Miami, and PI of the Coral Reef Simulation Lab. He has a PhD in Biological Oceanography form the University of Rhode Island. He was the Director of the National Center for Coral Reef Research (NCORE) from 2000 - 2015. From 1993 – 2000, he was a Senior Scientist and ultimately Leader of the Aquatic Environments Program at WorldFish (previously ICLARM), a CGIAR center with a circumtropical focus, based in the Philippines and Malaysia. He was previously an On-Site Scientist in the Philippines for USAID Program aimed at developing a new paradigm for fisheries analysis. With this, and three prior years in the U.S. Peace Corps plus more than a year as a scientific programmer, he spent nearly 20 years living in Southeast Asia. He lived in a small fishing village while leading a detailed study of the large Bolinao coral reef system (1986-1993). He organized and led ReefBase – the Global Coral Reef Database (1993 – 2000), and the MacArthur-funded project (1996-1999) “Population Interdependencies in the South China Sea” (PISCES), which was based on his 1992 suggestion for a Spratly Islands Peace Park, supported by the first broad-area particle-tracking reef connectivity study. PISCES involved Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia, and helped to strengthen ties among regional scientists.

He has done fieldwork on more than 100 coral reefs globally, including eight disputed reefs in the South China Sea. He organized the International Coral Reef Action Network (ICRAN) and helped set up the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI) and Global Coral Reef Monitoring Program (GCRMN). He has chaired more than 20 international workshops and has been sponsored to give plenary conference talks in nine countries. He was a member of the “CSIS Expert Working Group on the South China Sea” (2016-2018), aimed at defusing tensions in that region. He and his wife were officially recognized by the World Technology Network as being “among the most innovative people in the world in 2006”. His current work focuses on developing an empirically based Hydrologically Unified GeoEcological (HUGE) scenario-testing simulation system to estimate the timeframes at which the wave-protection afforded to millions of people by coral reefs will be lost due to sea-level rise. At that point, massive coastal erosion and organic pollution will devastate many coral reefs. He is married to Dr. Liana T. McManus, a consultant who has led numerous global and regional interdisciplinary UNEP projects.

Teaching and Mentoring

McManus teaches Fall courses on Coral Reef Science & Management, Marine Conservation Science, Marie Spatial Ecology, and Scientific Programming & Simulation. He has supervised numerous B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. theses.

John W McManus

Professor

University of Miami

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