I live at Maroubra, in Sydney, Australia. I am a relatively fit 70 year old with an enquiring mind and a love of the ocean. I started in marine biology before I was 10, spending much of my beach days poking around in rock pools and crevices.

In my early teens I took up spearfishing and spent a lot of hours snorkelling over numerous habitats, learning to think like a fish. This all led to a degree in zoology with a focus on marine ecology. In those days, the early 1970s, the ecology units at my university were more about natural history than experimental design and statistical analysis.

My degree, and possession of an abalone diving licence, led me to a job in the NSW fisheries department studying the abalone fishery, and to a lesser degree, scallops, sea urchins and turban snails. This work was basic fishery monitoring and simple population dynamics – done with relatively little experimental design or complex statistical analysis.

Subsequently, I moved to fisheries management and policy, then to natural resources policy, focussing mainly on water management.

In my retirement, I have returned to active marine biology and population dynamics to learn more about the statistical analyses I never became competent in early in my career.

I have a 5-year research permit from NSW Fisheries which ends in April 2024. It allows me to take undersize snails (<75mm), and to exceed the bag limit (20 snails per person) at 8 nominated research sites. I have enough data now to commence blogging, but there will be more material next year after I finish my diving and devote more time to data analysis.