Simon J Pierce is a marine biologist and conservationist known for discovering, studying, and protecting large marine animals such as whale sharks and manta rays.
He is the co-founder and principal scientist of the Marine Megafauna Foundation.
[1][2][3][4] Pierce has developed several non-invasive research techniques[5] for endangered species,[5][6][7][8] such as developing photo-identification with computer image analysis and artificial intelligence[9] to track populations of whale sharks and other species of marine animal.
[10] These techniques have been incorporated into Citizen Science[11] projects, including Sharkbook,[12] the global shark monitoring database, as well as other MMF projects such as Manta Matcher.
He led the conservation assessment on whale sharks for the IUCN Red List in 2016,[13] which resulted in the whale shark’s global protection through an Appendix I listing on the UN Convention on Migratory Species in 2017 and then led the first IUCN Green Status conservation assessment on whale sharks in 2021.