Kirby Liang Scholarship, £1500 awarded in November 2012 for achieving a 1st class honours degree at undergraduate level.

I have been fascinated by the ocean and marine life since I was very young, despite having grown up right in the middle of England, from many holidays down on the coast and taking up snorkelling at age 8 and scuba-diving at age 12 respectively. I was always particularly drawn to crustaceans while searching in rock pools and didn't mind getting pinched when trying to pick them up.

I studied marine biology at both undergraduate and masters level where my interests mainly included vertebrates and cephalopods, with a focus on their behaviour and how we can use behaviour to predict population patterns and the sustainability of fisheries. My MSc project involved travelling to the remote island of Rodriges to collect data on octopus abundance and the community composition of different areas of the lagoon subjected to differing levels of fishing pressure.

After several different unpaid positions, my breakthrough came in 2016 when I was offered a position as a marine enforcement officer at the Marine Management Organisation, based in Scarborough. Here, I enforced one of the largest small-scale crustacean fisheries in the country and began to develop a keen interest in edible crab and lobster ecology and how these important fisheries can be sustained. I started my PhD in 2020 and have been focusing on diseases in brown crabs since 2021.

My PhD project is investigating the prevalence and severity of diseases in edible crab populations around Wales, with a focus on differences between adults and juveniles, the presence of novel pathogens discovered in the south of England, habitat mapping of juveniles on shores and the effects of disease on crab reproductive potential.

[email protected]
07818673816

European Maritime and Fisheries Fund Group at Bangor University