Speaker Matt Landos 

BVSc (Hons I) MANZCVS (Aquatic Animal Health) 

Director, Future Fisheries Veterinary Service Pty Ltd

After graduating from Sydney University, Matt Landos began a career as a field veterinarian working with dairy cows in a rural practice in 1995. In 2000 he shifted focus to fish, prawns, oysters and abalone with NSW DPI-Fisheries, before departing to establish Future Fisheries Veterinary Service to consult to Aquaculture and Wild capture fisheries in 2005. 

In 2008 he led an investigation in a Queensland fish hatchery, experiencing spray drift from a neighbouring macadamia farm, where fish embryos were developing two heads and dying. This opened a pandora’s box of how even minute trace exposures to chemicals alter animal and human development. 

Through the prism of conserved evolutionary biology, comparative animal medicine, and ecotoxicology, an understanding of how pollutants could alter fish development, fish health, and fishery populations became clearer over time and with many more similar cases. 

Explanations of fishery declines, such as over-fishing, appeared inadequate as the role of pollutants had gone largely unconsidered. So too did many explanations of declining human fertility, changing behaviours of men, women, and learning difficulties in children. The fish are the harbingers of serious health consequences in humans.

He has written reports for the International Pollutant Elimination Network (www.ipen.org) on fishery declines due to pollutants and case studies illustrating the serious impacts on seafood.

During this talk he will focus on how pollutants like pesticides, surfactants, and flame retardants are impacting the viability of fisheries and to a significant extent, the health of humans through endocrine (hormone) disrupting effects. He will give insights into the way in which modern cultural adaptations obscure clear biological problems and some ways of moving forward.