What did you want to do when you were 16?

When I was 16 I didn’t know what I wanted to do! All I knew was that I wanted to help protect the environment and everything that lives in it, which led me to biology.

What kind of qualifications do you need for your job?

I have a degree in Wildlife Biology from Munster Technological University. In this course, we spent a lot of time outside actively engaging with the environment and learning how to scientifically investigate, collect and interpret data.

It was such an interesting course and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who likes plants, animals and the outdoors, but isn’t averse to a lot of hard work.

This course also came in handy for preparing me to work on aerial surveys, as I had an understanding of quality control, the scientific method, data collection, and weather interpretation and reporting.

What kind of career opportunities do you have?

It is a growing industry. In Ireland we need lots of new people to fill positions but we also need experienced people from countries with more established offshore wind industries to train us.

Eventually, I would like to develop my career to have more of a voice regarding the protection of coastal and marine wildlife environments.

Best part of your working day?

As an ecologist I use aerial surveys to understand how marine wildlife are using the area in and around proposed offshore wind farms.

We do this to help plan projects in a way that limits or eliminates any disturbance to these animals, many of which are protected under national and international laws. We collect a lot of the information we need to do this by using some of Green Rebel’s special survey aircraft. Every day is different but one thing I particularly enjoy is watching the sunset from the aircraft when we’re returning from an aerial survey. It’s also really cool when you come across whales and dolphin in the imagery we collect. One day I hope to meet one in person

Something that might surprise people about your role?

There are typically no toilets on small aircraft and one aerial survey can take between 4 to 8 hours depending on how big the site is. Sometimes we’re very relieved to get back down again!