Profile

I live in Orkney (an island at the very top of Scotland). It’s very beautiful here with lots of amazing scenery, however it can be very very windy! I am 25 years old and when I’m not working I enjoy running, sea swimming, playing netball, and walking my friends dogs in my spare time.

I am a PhD student researching interactions betweeen crab fisheries and aquaculture. This involves investigating shell disease in crabs and potential links with sea lice therapeutants used by the salmon aquaculture industry. In recent years, local fishermen have seen an increase in the occurence of black spot shell disease as well as claw deformities in brown and velvet crabs and have seen particularly high incidences of these in fishing areas close to salmon farm cages. This raises concerns over a potential link between these observed pathologies and salmon aquaculture activity.

There are also concerns that the use of the chemical sea lice treatment (Emamectin benzoate) has detrimental impacts on non-target crustaceans. Many lab exposure experiments have found that this chemical has a number of toxic effects in a wide range of arthropod crusteans. Exposure to this chemical can cause lobsters to moult prematurely and effect the gene expression of spot prawns, among other toxic effects which affect their survival. Therefore, it is important to determine whether crustaceans are exposed to this chemical in the natural environment and to know if there is a link between these observed pathologies in crabs and sea lice chemicals to dismiss or support concerns from local fishermen.

My day to day work involves going out on fishing boats around Orkney to assess crabs caught by fishermen for shell disease and claw deformities to determine the incidence of these pathologies in the natural environment. Whilst on the boat I take measurements of crabs caught by fishermen, and note whether they have either of these unpleasant abnormalities, I also note the sex of each crab and where they were caught. I bring a small number of crabs ashore for dissection in the laboratory and then analyse the crab tissue for chemical and heavy metal residues. Otherwise I spend a lot of my time reading research papers, writing the introduction of my PhD thesis, working up and analysing data and attending workshops and conferences.