Overview

I intended to do marine biology but swerved off the track into clinical medicine and got trapped in that for decades. Running observer programs on local fisheries to study cetacean bycatch in my spare time lead me into developing acoustic instruments that detect the echo-location of toothed cetaceans. These instruments are now in use on all continents and have been the main research tool for several PhDs, so I have switched to working on cetacean monitoring, and particularly by-catch mitigation, full time.

I have set up a company, Chelonia Limited to manufacture the instruments.

Broad research specialisms:

• Marine acoustics
• Echo-location by animals
• Bycatch of cetaceans in fisheries and its mitigation.

Qualifications

MB
BChir
DCH

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Research

Research interests

Development of better tools that utilize passive acoustics to determine presence, density and behavior of echo-locators.

Research projects

Evaluation of a fishery pinger – the Banana Pinger – developed with Fishtek Limited. Does it work by altering or repelling porpoises? Does it reduce dolphin by catch in set net fisheries? Can that be determined without large studies using dolphin mortality as their test statistic?

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