My first career as a Hydrographic Surveyor (see also ) involved working and living on ships for a couple of years in the North Sea and English Channel, operating sonar equipment to map the seabed for oil and gas exploration and to update charts for The Admiralty. Living and working at sea was an unforgettable experience which sometimes I miss; the freedom you feel with being constantly on the move and exploring, the sights and sounds of living on a ship. I was quite young when I worked offshore (another life?) and at the time still wished to explore different career paths. Here are some pictures of life on ship during unusually calm conditions:

The ocean has been an important part of my life. I was lucky enough to grow up next to the sea on the attractive Devon coast, which I think inspired my life-long interest in the marine environment and my desire to be close to it. I am certainly not unique in feeling a closeness with the ocean and feeling its importance in my life. It has immense beauty, power, danger and intrigue and even its local horizons tempt thoughts of the unknown, freedom, adventure, infinity, ...

My current project, which I've been working on for 5 years, is focused on exploring the role of internal waves (i.e., waves beneath the surface of a fluid) in the creation and longevity of density layers. These layers of different density occur in many regions of the oceans, with one example being the layers frequently observed in the Arctic Ocean pycnocline, for example, during the Beaufort Gyre Exploration Project. Here is a movie of some layers from one of our numerical experiments:

The movie shows a layering of the fluid across the domain using contours of the vertical gradient of density. The signatures of internal waves are evident in the simulation. See for more information about this work and for project details.

Swimming and boating are two things that I enjoy in my free time. Here is a picture of several of us from the club doing some open-water swimming: