Graeme Hays

In 2022 Hays received the Scopus Outstanding Researcher Award (Australia & New Zealand) for Excellence in Research Impacting a Sustainable Future. The award recognised his research that "Uses satellite tracking to reveal the movements and patterns of habitat use by marine animals and highlights the threats of climate change for sea turtles".

According to the 2020 science-wide standardized citation indicator, developed by Stanford University academic John P.A. Ioannidis and colleagues, Hays was listed in the top 30 most cited marine biologists in the world.

In recognition of his research, he was made an Alfred Deakin Professor in 2014, the most prestigious honour that Deakin University bestows on its staff.

He served on numerous journal editorial boards and from 2005 to 2013 he was Executive Editor of the British Ecological Society's Journal of Animal Ecology.

His research expedition to Ascension Island in 1997 for satellite tracking studies of green turtles to examine questions of turtle navigation first posed by Charles Darwin, became the subject of a best-selling book Turtle Island: A Visit To Britain’s Oddest Colony by Sergio Ghione.

Hays gained a PhD in physiological ecology in 1991 under the mentorship of John Speakman FRS at the University of Aberdeen. He worked at the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science and Bangor University, Wales before becoming a lecturer at Swansea University in 1996, becoming a Professor in 2005. He became Professor of Marine Science at Deakin University in Australia in 2013.

In 1990 he conducted one of the first satellite tracking studies of sea turtles and subsequently used this approach to assess their navigational abilities, including at-sea experiments, and to reveal how ocean currents affect movements and so influence migration patterns.

Graeme C. Hays (born 1966) is a British and Australian marine ecologist known for his work with sea turtles and plankton. He is the Alfred Deakin Professor of Marine Science at Deakin University, Australia.