After obtaining a BSc in Oceanography with
Marine Biology from Southampton University,
Chris began his career working as a
fisheries scientist for the Western
Australian Fisheries Marine Research
Laboratories in Perth monitoring the stocks
of pink snapper in Shark Bay, before moving
to a similar role at the National Institute
of Water and Atmospheric research (NIWA) in
Auckland, New Zealand.
It was whilst living in New Zealand that he developed a keen
interest in marine mammals, assisting with research in the Zoology department at the
University of Otago in Dunedin. This included studying the population ecology of
Hector’s dolphins within the Banks Peninsula
Marine Mammal Sanctuary and a project to
ascertain the impacts of whale watching
vessels on the behaviour and distribution of
sperm whales off Kaikoura.
Chris then began
working as an independent marine mammal
observer aboard seismic vessels in the Great
Australian Bight, North Sea and
Faroe-Shetland basin for a variety of
multi-national clients in the oil industry.
As an oceanographer, Chris has worked for
the European Space Agency (ESA) involved
with the validation and calibration of ocean
colour data from the new ESA satellite ENVISAT. During a research cruise in the
Indian Ocean aboard the R/V Charles Darwin
oceanographic samples were collected in
order to develop satellite algorithms to
accurately predict chlorophyll levels in the
surface ocean.
More recently, he has been studying the
ecology of seals and penguins on Bird
Island, South Georgia with the British
Antarctic Survey. Living for an unbroken
period of two and a half years within a
small, isolated community of other
scientists his research focussed on the
demographics, physiology and foraging
dynamics of macaroni penguins and Antarctic
fur seals, in particular trying to ascertain
the reasons for the substantial decline in
the population of macaroni penguins on South
Georgia in recent years. This work
contributed to the conservation objectives
of CCAMLR (Commission for the Conservation
of Antarctic Marine Living Resources) and
has been published in a variety of
scientific journals.
