Profile

I live on the Isle of Anglesey in North Wales. I absolutely love living here, it is amazing being surround by such beautiful mountains and beaches. I love nothing more than sleeping out in the countryside in our campervan, waking up to the sound of waves on the beach. I have 3 kids, a girl and twin boys, who keep me on my toes for sure – add in an over-excitable dog – my house is chaos! But I wouldn’t change it for the world…

I am a marine biology lecturer at Bangor University, which means I spend a lot of time teaching students all sorts of things about the marine world, about fisheries and how they can impact the environment, and how we can collect data and analyse it to find out the answer to interesting scientific questions! I really enjoy teaching, it’s great helping students develop their skills in a topic they enjoy!

I also do research for the Marine Stewardship Council. I write computer programs to help understand which types of fishing cause most harm to the environment. Hopefully, people can then use these computer programs to help work who should be allowed to use this little blue symbol to show that their fish are more ‘eco-friendly’.

When you buy fish at the supermarket, you might have seen a little blue symbol on them (I’ve put a picture of it below). This symbol is a sign that the fish comes from a more environmentally friendly and sustainable fishery – this is called an eco-label, because it shows you which is a more ‘eco-friendly’ product. A large team of scientists at the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC for short) work out how to decide who is allowed to use this label on their food – our research helps them to decide who can use the label. Look out for it next time you are at the supermarket!

I spend a lot of my time teaching University students about marine biology, so I’m often creating lectures (lessons), or marking student work – it’s great fun teaching something you are passionate about! I particularly enjoy teaching students how to use computer code to do scientific research – I’m a bit of a  geek.

I am also really lucky that Bangor Uni is in a really pretty place – the view from the office is not bad!

We have a pretty cool research boat at the School of Ocean Sciences too – sometimes I get to go out on it and collect fish or survey what is on the seabed Click here to see a video of the seabed taken from the boat!

I even got to meet Prince Charles once!

You can see a little video about what it’s like to study at the School of Ocean Sciences at Bangor University here!