Seashore Ecology of New Zealand and the Pacific

Graduating in zoology at Auckland University in 1946, John Morton spent ten years in England, lecturing in the University of London and working on Molluscs at Plymouth. His publications gained him the London DSc. In 1960, Morton became Auckland University’s first Professor of Zoology, and was to set up a modern school centring around marine biology. The year 1965 saw the opening of the Leigh Marine Biology Laboratory and the completion of Morton and Miller The New Zealand Sea Shore. It was also the year that John Morton led the marine party of the Royal Society of London’s Expedition to the Solomon Islands. This brought him continuing interest in Pacific coral reefs and he went on to work intensively in Fiji, Samoa, Cook Islands, New Caledonia and Papua New Guinea. In 1974 he was Royal Society Visiting Professor in Zoology in Hong Kong, producing - with B.S. Morton - a book on south-east Asian shores. In 1977 he taught and researched at Vancouver Island and on the Atlantic shores of Canada. He has a long interest in biological philosophy and, in more recent years, conservation.