Come and meet the team that will be mapping Ireland’s kelp forest.
Principal Investigator
Dr. Anne Marie Power
A Senior Lecturer in Zoology at the Ryan Institute, University of Galway, whose primary interests are settlement of marine propagules, sustainable fisheries, and the effect of global change on distribution of marine species. Anne Marie obtained her PhD (Zoology) from UCC in 2000 and was the primary postdoc on MarClim coastal monitoring efforts in the early 2000s before obtaining her position at University of Galway. @BarnacleHunt
Dr. Isla Twigg
Our postdoctoral researcher on the SeaForest project. She gained her PhD (Marine Science) from the University of Otago, New Zealand in 2022 where she studied the microbial ecology of kelp forests. Before coming to Galway she worked as a postdoc in New Zealand, specialising in benthic habitat mapping and species distribution modelling in coastal waters.
Dr. Finn Ryder
A research assistant from Dunedin, New Zealand, working on the SeaForest project. He gained his PhD in Marine Science from the University of Otago in 2024, focusing on abalone population dynamics. Before moving to Galway, Finn worked as a postdoctoral researcher modelling the distribution of kelp around southern Australia.
Ryan Davies, MSc.
A research assistant arriving from Newfoundland, Canada for the newly appointed SeaForest project. His previous work has encompassed a host of applied marine conservation and ecology initiatives, ranging from tropical coral restoration in the Maldives, marine mammal monitoring in the North Atlantic and behavioural studies on basking sharks (Cetorhinus maximus) along the Irish coast. He is a PADI-level dive master and has recently graduated with an MSc in marine biological resources.
Technical Officers
Storm McDonald
Technical Officer
Dariusz Nowak
Senior Technical Officer
Eoin Mac Loughlin
Chief Technical Officer
The SeaForest Project 