Matthew is a marine ecologist whose primary research focusses on interactions between marine primary producers and their environment. He is specifically interested in how seagrass health is impacted by their surrounding sediments, including associated microbial communities. He is also interested in understanding the bottom up impacts of declines in marine primary producers related to climate change. He addresses these research areas with a range of different methodologies that include molecular ecology, biogeochemistry, and plant physiology in both controlled tank systems and in large scale field experiments. His future research aims to allow belowground conditions to be modelled into existing seagrass management and monitoring programs, to better understand and protect against sudden seagrass diebacks.