I recently completed my PhD at the University of St Andrews where I worked with samples from the Scottish Marine Animal Strandings Scheme to identify markers of health, body condition and reproductive status in marine mammal blubber tissue.
My role in the ARISE project is the analysis of seal teeth in order to identify any shifts in their diet and trophic position (through stable isotope analyses), and identify years of poor or favourable environmental conditions (through the measurement of growth layer groups and tooth mineralisation anomalies) in response to resent ecological changes.
