Scott Atkinson in Australia

Since graduating I have worked on many varied projects: installing water discharge meters in Kyrgyzstan during gold mine pre-feasibility studies, sea turtle monitoring and conservation planning for the Nature Conservancy in the Virgin Islands, helping to organise lionfish control measures in the Caribbean and, more recently I have taken part in both seagrass remote sensing and monitoring as well as paleoecological research on the northern Great Barrier Reef in Australia.

My time at Plymouth gave me a good base in fieldwork and conservation approaches. While my honours studied terrestrial orchids in Spain, the skills I learned have allowed me to move into tropical marine ecology just as readily.

I am currently working for an MSc Conservation Biology at the University of Queensland and would then like to pursue a PhD whilst working in conservation.

With all my work I love the fact that I get to be outside in beautiful, sometimes dangerous, but ultimately inspiring places. Having your camp wiped out by an avalanche at 3000m in the Tian Shan mountains and being stranded in -30oC temperatures awaiting rescue may not be ideal, but it really serves to remind me that the conservation of nature and natural processes is something really worth putting it out there for.