Biography: I have been working in fisheries research and management for more than quarter of a century. I started my career in fisheries as an Inspector with the Northern Regional Fisheries Board in 1985, taking study leave from the Board to complete a BSc in Biology (Hons) at Queens University Belfast in 1989, having previously been a graduate of Dundalk and Sligo IT’s (National Certificate in Applied Biology & National Diploma in Environmental Science respectively). I have a PhD, also from Queen’s, in the area of population genetics, which I completed part-time in 1997, while working as a biologist for the Salmon Research Agency of Ireland (now the Marine Institute) at it’s world famous research station on the Burrishoole River in County Mayo. I was a Biologist and Team Leader with the Institute until 2008. I did a spell on secondment as Director of Protection and Conservation in the Central Fisheries Board (now Inland Fisheries Ireland) between 2000 and 2002, and in 2008 was employed by University College Cork as the Principal Investigator for the prestigious Beaufort Marine Research Award in Fish Population Genetics, which was a seven year, €4m, joint collaboration between University College Cork, Queens University Belfast and the Marine Institute. In 2015 I am currently UCC Marine Institute Principal Investigator in Fish Population Genetics, based at the Institute's research facility in Newport, Co. Mayo. Recently, July 2019, I was appointed to the position of Research Professor in the Environmental Research Institute (ERI) in University College Cork. I am probably best known for my research on the genetic impacts of farm escapes, but have also been published widely in the areas of salmonid population biology and ecology, stock assessment, population genetics, evolutionary biology, and the inventory of freshwater fish habitat. I have served and continue to contribute to a number of Commissions and Working Groups: the National (Ir

Research Interests: My background is in fish population biology and genetics and the associated disciplines of molecular ecology and evolutionary biology.  I am interested in how these areas of research, in addition to fish stock assessment (demography) and the inventory and measurement freshwater habitats (the template for biological activity), can be applied to achieving a greater understanding of the biology and ecology of salmonids, particularly Atlantic salmon and brown trout.  Also I am interested as to how knowledge obtained from this kind of research can be used in resolving issues related to man’s, mostly negative, impact on the productivity and resilience of these species and their constituent populations, which might previously have been considered as being intractable.For more than two decades, along with fellow researchers in UCC, Queen’s University Belfast, the Marine Institute and Inland Fisheries Ireland, as well as many international associates, we have been applying techniques (e.g. the deployment of genetic markers to facilitate common garden experiments in the wild), integral to the above topics, to the such questions as the impact of the deliberate or inadvertent release of cultured fish into the wild; stock specific distribution and migration patterns of salmon and sea trout in the ocean; the geographical scale at which local adaptation occurs in the wild; the contribution of individual rivers to mixed stock recreational and commercial fisheries; the evolutionary effects of climate variability, fisheries, disease, habitat change; the application of evolutionary principle

Salmon Management: New Advances (MSC Marine Fisheries & Aquaculture - BL6013); Farmed escape Atlantic samon (BSc Biology Biology & Management of Alien Species AE 4015)