Visitors to the Western Australian Museum’s seven museums will be familiar with our collections: massive meteorites in Boola Bardip; the America’s Cup-winning winged keel in the WA Maritime Museum; sub-sea technology that revealed the subjects for the Shipwrecks Museum; the fish drawings of Robert Neill in the Museum of the Great Southern; extraordinary gold specimens in the Museum of the Goldfields; rare fossil sharks in the Museum of Geraldton; and beguiling burrowing bees in Carnarvon.

Those visitors may be less familiar with the leading-edge scientific research work that is carried out behind the scenes, based on a State collection of over eight million items. Much of this collection is not destined for display but it may well hold the answers to some of the most pressing questions of our time, and to questions not yet even imagined.

The Museum’s scientists, curators, associates and volunteers are active researchers in the fields of biodiversity, earth and planetary sciences, maritime heritage, cultural history and the social sciences.

Along with climate change – and inextricably linked to it – species loss is one of the greatest existential threats facing our planet, so by the same token, species survival is critical to our future.  It is heartening to know that the Museum’s natural scientists are busy adding to our knowledge of the natural environment – terrestrial and marine – by surveying literally thousands of square kilometres of land and sea, and charting the distribution of species, finding animals that have never been recognised, or described.

Using the Museum’s extensive collections, our researchers lever their own unique expertise with the strong relationships they have built with synergistic organisations to advance knowledge and, ultimately, inform a better understanding of our world and, hopefully, more sympathetic treatment of it.

In doing this, they make the most extraordinary discoveries, not only of previously unknown species, but of the brilliant and, sometimes, bizarre adaptations that have evolved in nature.

Just last week, our Curator of Fish, Dr Glenn Moore, showed me an angler fish found during one of his survey expeditions. Angler fish are deep water fishes that capture their prey by dangling their fleshy lure in front of their mouths to attract prey.

This particular species is rare and difficult to collect because it is found in the deep sea and is completely black, inside and out! This murky and dense colouring is thought to be a survival adaptation: the fish’s main prey are phosphorescent shrimps which continue to glow in the dark even after being consumed.  If the angler fish was not completely black, it would, glow like a lantern and become easy prey for bigger fish!

From the deep sea to the vast expanse of the Pilbara, another team of WA Museum researchers, together with colleagues from the Queensland University of Technology, discovered two new species of planigales, Australia’s tiniest carnivorous marsupials. These tiny marsupials have been running around the Pilbara for thousands of years and yet we are only learning about them now: being smaller than mice, nocturnal and secretive, they are rarely seen, yet they play an important ecological role, managing insect populations and providing food for larger species.

Last year, in remote WA, a Traditional Owners ranger group found a fatally injured night parrot Pezoporus occidentalis – one of Australia’s rarest birds, and one that, until recently, was thought to be extinct.  Whilst the bird could not be saved, its body was, and was presented to the Museum.

It now delivers a very important conservation message in the Wild Life gallery at Boola Bardip, but before it went on public display, tissue was shared with CSIRO’s Applied Genomics Initiative.  This resulted in the first ever mapping of the full genome of the night parrot: an essential step in understanding its biology and ecology, and in informing conservation initiatives.

I could provide almost endless examples of similar  important  research initiatives undertaken, or supported by Museum scientists, some of which might surprise you: analysis of maritime archaeological material that reveals marine sedimentation cycles that can determine the location (or not!) of deep water ports; marine organisms that have been assayed to isolate cancer-fighting compounds; my colleague Diana Jones AM, an expert in marine crustaceans, was called upon to analyse wreckage from MH-370, in the hope that the fauna that had established itself could provide indications of its final resting place.

No one making these collections could ever have imagined they would be used in these ways.

Public Museums the world over, are regularly identified in surveys as some of the most trusted of institutions. Whether it is the displays, programs or research, they are imbued with integrity and independence. This trust may be our greatest asset – more so than even our collections and our expertise.  It is hard won and should be jealously guarded.

Climate change, species loss, over-population, food insecurity, social unrest and racism are all existential crises that have to be addressed: urgent problems that must be solved.  Answers must be based upon the best possible evidence, provided by the most trusted sources.

So, who can we turn to in such troubled times? Who can we trust to provide answers and opinions without fear or favour in the so-called post-truth age?  I hope we can trust our great public museums, their research and their messaging. If not, where else can we turn?

People often ask me what our researchers are doing, hidden away in our Collections and Research Centre. I reply, with only a hint of hyperbole, “They are saving the world.”  Now there’s an aspiration for National Science Week.