Marissa McNamara

Dr Marissa McNamara is a Collection Manager working with the crustacean collection. She performs many different tasks, including registering new specimens into the State Collection, helping researchers borrow specimens, and answering public enquiries — which can be tricky, because there are about 10,000 crustacean species in Australia! Marissa loves the diversity of this group, which includes not just crabs, prawns and lobsters, but spear-wielding mantis shrimps and giant deep-sea isopods! And don’t forget hermit crabs— these shell-inhabiting crustaceans are some of her favourites, and she co-authored a new species of hermit in 2024. When she’s not counting crabs or boxing barnacles, Marissa also helps manage the fish collection, and has recently been working with deep-sea fishes collected in up to 3600m of water.