#jobalert 📢 Delighted to offer a 3-year postdoctoral position in my research group at ATU Galway, Ireland. This is an exciting role in the new and ambitious native oyster reef restoration #BRICONS Project funded by the Marine Institute. To apply www.atu.ie/connect/jobs....
Deadline: 9 May 2025 12pm

In the biogenic habitats lab we also get to study Irish seagrass beds, from some of the deepest ones in Europe down in Kerry (1st), to rich mosaic seagrass-oyster-maerl biotopes in Conamara (2nd) to almost urban seagrass meadows near Galway city (3rd and 4th picture ).
#worldseagrassday

Old habits are hard to break and I have defaulted to the old site for posting lately. I need to transition proper and will start posting more here. I'll start with news of two successful collaborative project proposals for shellfish reef restoration projects due to start in 2025. Cue these photos 👇

Thanks @ruththurstan.bsky.social! delighted to see two of those photos 👇 in yesterday's BBC Wildlife Magazine piece. I am hopeful too, hopeful they'll receive the protection they need as the last pockets of a lost habitat, clinging here in Ireland. We are documenting them also in case we lose them.

More BRUV footage with unexpected species. Following that Atlantic salmon, here we have a pair of common squid (Loligo vulgaris) gliding in front of the camera. The footage is part of our ongoing study of fish utilisation of seaweed farms but as it happens there is a #seagrass meadow nearby.

It's not just shellfish reefs we study in my group, I have a lot of love for seagrass. A new found, serendipitous love as a result of a completely different project on seaweed farming. Some of the nicest dives I have ever done are on seagrass beds. Esp. summer, with all the juvenile fish thriving.

The seagrass is also quite something.

Sharing this photo of a native oyster bed in one of our survey sites here for the first time. This was my coelacanth moment, especially as many deny these oyster habitats even exist. Same as eels, Ostrea edulis (the species and the habitat) are threatened and yet we keep managing them as a fishery.

Jury's out if Atlantic salmon can be regarded as using kelp farms has habitat but this guy passed closed enough to one of our baited cameras to deserve being added to our fishy list. Wait until you see the next interloper, it has tentacles!
Oh, and happy #PhycologyFriday (because it's sugar kelp).

As a way of second intro, my #ScholarGoogler wordcloud taken from my Google Scholar profile scholargoggler.com. I wouldn't say this is what I do because what I mostly do these days is writing emails, raising purchase orders and marking. It comes with the job. It is what I love working on, I'd say.

Looking at some photos from an old Modiolus survey off Shetland I ended up in Jakobsen's Norn dictionary and I'm on a weird rabbit hole because I love this stuff. Then I remembered horse mussels were called 'Yaug' in Shetland but never found the reference, and it's here: øg or jog, old Norse Aða.

On way back from the Netherlands from a very stimulating workshop on rewilding the North Sea. What better airport read than 'Cod'. I'm excited for what can happen thanks to conservationists with vision. The difficulty is resisting the push for industry technofixes, we don't need more of the same.

About time I inaugurated my presence on this cielo azul. Feels like the old 🐦 many familiar faces. I'm a Spanish marine ecologist based in the west of Ireland, where I've spent half my life. My passion is nature conservation, and that is how I frame my group's research on biogenic habitats.Talk soon