High School StudentsI receive quite a few enquiries from students, and because I do not work in an educational institution it is difficult for me to find time to answer questions, many of which follow a standard pattern based on a US high school curriculum. If you are a high school student and you write to me directly, you will likely be disapponted because I'm not able to reply. There are lots of places on the web where you can find answers to the high school questions about oceanography, oceanographers and careers in marine science. My recent research focussed upon the distribution and abundance of deepwater fish and mesopelagic organisms, particularly lantern fish. Acoustics is the principal tool used for these investigations, although I have also used trawl catch data. Much of my recent work is closely related to biomass estimation of commercially exploited fishes around New Zealand, such as orange roughy and hoki. I continue to be involved with the measurement of acoustic target strength as a key variable in biomass estimation. Recently I have expanded my interests to examine the deep scattering layer around New Zealand. The research is currently focussed on how mesopelagic scattering layers are distributed vertically and horizontally, and how the abundance of these "feed layers" are related to the condition and abundance of commercially exploited hoki. These studies are relevant to understanding the growth of hoki, the fish that supports New Zealands largest fishery. The United States Office of Naval Research has prepared a very useful booklet that addresses many of the questions posed in the high school curriculum questions that you may have been asked to answer: http://www.onr.navy.mil/onr/careers/contents.htm The Texas A&M Sea Grant College Program has also produced a publication that provides concise but informative answers to those questions that educators and information sources are often called upon to answer: http://www-ocean.tamu.edu/Careers/ Use these resources to answer the questions the teacher has assigned. For the more specific questions, e.g. to get a summary of my current research interests, or those of another oceanographer, use the global directory of marine scientists, searching by the name of the person: http://ioc2.unesco.org/glodir/ Note that questions about salary and about age breach the New Zealand Privacy Act and would not be answered in any case. -------------------- Here is another useful link: |