KathWhittey

I am a second year PhD student at Cardiff University. I graduated from Cardiff University with a BSc in Biology. During my undergraduate project I set up a collaboration with the Hydrous and Grace C. Young and from this collaboration gained a funded scholarship for a PhD with Knowledge Economy Skills Scholarships (KESS2), supervised by Dr Sarah E. Perkins and Prof. Jo Cable. I am very passionate about the marine environment and using new methodologies to survey coral reefs. Through my affiliations with the Grace C. Young and the Hydrous (https://www.thehydro.us), I have been using 3D modelling to survey the sharknose goby cleaner fish habitat at Cardiff Universities long-terms study site in Tobago.

In addition to using surveying and monitoring techniques I am interested in using novel approaches to replicate the space that coral provides. This brought me to develop ‘Fish-Hives’, an artificial concrete dome made from a simple space-hopper mould. I hope that Fish-Hives will prove to be an affordable, reproducible and durable structure which will successfully mimic the coral habitat providing shelter for fish.

April 2019