Barb is a marine biologist with a B.Tech (Hons) from Massey University and a PhD from the University of Otago. She spent her early career researching depuration of oysters in Mahurangi and recruitment processes of greenshell mussels in Marlborough Sounds and she was a founding member of the NZ Shellfish Sanitation Committee, which established the quality assurance procedures needed to ensure the public health safety of cultured shellfish and to facilitate export of the seafood to the USA and other countries.

Judi is a marine benthic ecologist, with a PhD from Abo Akademi University. Her special interests include coastal and estuarine marine ecology; scale dependent processes in heterogeneous environments; biological and ecological mapping; biodiversity; and ecological impact assessment. 

Rob is a coastal oceanographer with 30 years experience with a PhD from the University of Canterbury in Civil Engineering. He consults extensively on coastal & estuarine environmental projects particularly the effects of coastal wastewater discharges, dredging, water quality modelling, coastal hazards and the impacts of coastal climate change. He is on the Advisory Board for the Civil & Natural Resources Engineering Department at Canterbury University.