Dr Burke Hill

Biographical information on Dr Hill and his workDr Burke Hill became assistant chief of the CSIRO Division of Fisheries and officer in charge of the Cleveland laboratory in 1991, and acting chief of the division in 1996, playing a key role in creating the new Division of Marine Research.

In 1992 Dr Hill was appointed to the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC) board, a position he held until 1997. He also served on the board of the Queensland Fisheries Management Authority. He was a driving force behind the redevelopment of the CSIRO Cleveland site in 1990–1991 and was highly regarded as a dedicated, visionary and effective scientist and manager who was generous with his knowledge and his passion for research.

Burke Hill influenced the career of many in CSIRO and the general marine science community, and had a major impact on Australian fisheries research, policy and management. He encouraged the Australian Fisheries Management Authority, the FRDC, and the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry to embrace ecosystem approaches to fisheries management, long before the concept was topical. Dr Hill retired from CSIRO on February 1999, but continued to work as an CSIRO Honorary Fellow until his death in 2006.

His early research covered the ecology, behaviour and physiology of various animals from crabs to fish. His everlasting fascination with the mud crab, Scylla serrata, started in 1972 when he began examining its breeding, growth, physiology, feeding activity, and movements. His extensive studies of this commercially important crab, in Africa and Australia, generated many scientific papers and requests for research and management advice from throughout the Indo-Pacific.

After joining the CSIRO Division of Fisheries Research at Cleveland in December 1981, Dr Hill developed experimental systems for laboratory and field observations and continued his interest in crabs – partly through the supervision of postgraduate students from University of Queensland, Griffith University and Queensland Institute of Technology. He was instrumental in encouraging ACIAR to support what became very successful research projects on mud crabs throughout the broader Asian region and provided a great deal of technical advice to ACIAR projects.

During his last years Burke began work on a major book on mud crabs. This involved putting together the comprehensive collection of references to mud crabs made available here. The first chapter of the unfinished book will also be published here.