Hi Guys, I’m Susan and I am the Marine Invasive Non-Native Species Natural Talent trainee. I will be based at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh and I will spend my summer months in the far north of Scotland. So far in fact I hope to visit the most northerly settlement in Britain, a wee place called Skaw in Shetland. If I do I will post a pic! A big part of my traineeship will be spent in Orkney where I will be involved in surveying, community outreach and even some DNA work on Non-Native Species. I’m in for an adventure!
I will learn which seashore species are ours and which ones are aliens to our shores. Some will be tolerated holiday makers and others unwelcomed guests! I will be hunting through museum archives to dig out some specimens, shadowing experts, building identification techniques and getting out and about on our seashores.
The most important part is getting people involved and broadening the awareness of the Non-Natives that are spreading along our coastlines.
Currently, there is no specific survey for Non-natives in the UK and there is little understanding on their impacts. I will teach volunteers, communities, schools and other stakeholders about Non-Natives, how to identify them, where to find them and how to record them. This invaluable information will allow us to gain a better understanding of the effects they have on our seashores and our native wildlife. I have so many ideas and I hope I can get as many of them off the ground within the year!
I started my career sifted through sand for worms, nematodes and tiny shells (not everyone cup of tea!) up in Orkney and it was here I also came across my first Non-Natives. I will never forget the gloopy clumps of Orange tipped sea squirts and the creepy, slow-moving Japanese Skeleton Shrimps that completely covered one of the mooring buoys. (Sounds gross doesn’t it!) From that moment I was fascinated by them! I came across another Non-Native species as a volunteer biologist in Ireland, a delicate, highly invasive, brown seaweed called Sargassum muticum before coming home to Scotland and later, gaining this traineeship where I am knee deep in the fascinating world of marine biology and its odd inhabitants once more.