Profile

I am from Dun Laoghaire in Dublin. I currently live in Co. Wicklow with my Fiancé Anna, who is from Latvia. We attend dance lessons weekly (Ballroom, Tango, Cha Cha Cha among others). I am also learning to speak Russian.

I am a Lifesaving Instructor and Treasurer of Monkstown Lifesaving Club (which I have been a member of since I was 3 years old). I teach lifesaving once a week to students from aged 5 to 105. My favourite part of lifesaving is Beach Lifesaving Sport and I run classes in the Summer for students aged 12 and up. Here is a picture of me with the blue racing board about to run into the sea at the start of the Board Race at the Mountbatton Beach Lifesaving Competition last Summer.

So I am very happy that I was able to merge my lifelong passion of being in the water with my career, working in the marine science industry.

In my spare time I play video games (One of my favourite is Minecraft) and board games (I especially like strategy games) with my brothers and friends. I also spend a lot time managing my Fantasy Premier League football team! I do need to get back into Surfing and Hiking/Camping…

As an Oceanographic Engineer I am mainly focused on the physical parts of the sea (waves, water flow speed and direction, water temperature, water clarity, creating maps of the bottom of the sea). It is different from a Marine Biologist who is mainly focused on marine life (dolphins, sharks, jellyfish, seaweed).

I work on a lot of different projects:

Dublin Port – Alexandra Basin Redevelopment (ABR) Project, to make it possible for larger ships to come into the harbour they are making the harbour deeper by using a giant hoover to suck up the sand and dirt at the bottom of the harbour into a boat. The boat then travels out in to Dublin Bay and dumps all the sand and dirt into the water. Our job is to monitor the environment at the dump site by measuring the amount of sand and dirt floating in the water. We get live data sent from our 4 buoys to our office every 15 minutes. If the levels of sand and dirt floating in the water get to high the Captain of the dredge ship automatically gets a text message telling him to stop dumping operations. My part of the project was to make sure all the computers, batteries, solar panels, antenna and scientific instruments fit on the buoy where they needed to go. Here is a photo of one of our buoys:

I also collected underwater video using our ROV, of a wastewater treatment plants outfall pipe in the sea to make sure that it was still functioning properly after years of operation. Here are some pictures I took of some of the rubbish and some of the marine life that was on the bottom of the estuary: