By: Dr Bruce Mann
As many of you know, we recently said goodbye to Stuart Dunlop who has been our Tagging Officer at ORI for the past seven years. Stuart ran the project very competently and with great enthusiasm. He gained tremendous knowledge on the linefish species found off the South African coast and has himself become a very good angler and tagger. Stuart and his wife Bronwyn have landed a fantastic opportunity to monitor nesting sea birds and turtles on Cousin Island in the Seychelles. We are green with envy and sad to see Stuart go but we wish them both well in their adventure of a lifetime!
We advertised Stuart’s position nationally and received some very strong applications. We are pleased to announce that Gareth Jordaan came out top and has accepted the position. Gareth has recently completed his MSc working on the shark by-catch of the pelagic longline fishery. It is a wonderful opportunity for him to develop his career in marine science and we welcome him as our new Tagging Officer. Gareth officially starts on the 1 April but will be spending time over the next few weeks learning the Tagging Programme and getting himself up to speed.
We are currently in the process of updating the existing tagging database into a more efficient and modern system. This is going to take some time and we ask our taggers to please be patient while we undergo this upgrade.
