Thomas Schlacher is Professor of Marine Science at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia.  Because he sees the world as a diverse and fascinating place, Thomas tends to vacillate on making exclusive decisions about his research directions. Consequently, he has tried to explore the natural world in diverse habitat types, work in different ecosystems, look at structures and processes at different levels of ecological organisation, and poked a great many different animals along the way (apologies to all of them). Lately, some of the main thrusts of his research have fallen, very broadly into the following fields: 1.) The ecology of scavengers at the land-ocean interface; 2.) Carbon and nitrogen pathways in estuarine and near-shore food webs, including questions of energetic linkages between landscape elements; 3.) The conservation of sandy beaches, coastal dune and surf-zone ecosystems, and 4) biodiversity of deep-sea communities, particularly seamounts and canyons, and the environmental consequences of fishing, mining and oil & gas explorations, and 5.) The restoration of estuarine oyster reefs to enhance fish diversity and productivity.