Models of fish

I made these models originally to avoid using mathematics. I wanted to work out how flexible springs would have to be to wriggle the tail of a fish that swam with the standard theoretical wave form. The springs would need to be off-set from the centre line of […]

Oyster settlement models

I’ve made a load of models of small living particles being moved around in hydrodynamic models (have a look at a few of the posts here). Mostly larvae, but also seeds and other propagules. These things can swim, and they can change their buoyancy. They can alter their […]

Modelling historical tag tracks

Here is an example of taking a track from an historical paper and modelling it. This means that new information can be derived from old published data. So, we take a modern hydrodynamic model of the area where the tag was deployed, we set it up to replicate […]

Tuna behaviour and scans

Here is an MRI scan of a tuna head – 1m TL Albacore Tuna. Kindly provided by Hobart Hospital. This is reproduced from a paper I co-authored on Tuna behaviour, listed in the scientific references in this site.

Artemis – mussel machine learning

Artemis – aren’t they all called that! Here I developed a simple method to machine classify the behavioural state of a load of mussels. Basically the experiment consisted of exposing groups of 8 mussels to a varying concentration of pollutants to see when they reacted (by closing their […]

Whales and Krill

These studies obsessed me for a few years. There are two papers listed in the Scientific Research referenced on the right of this page. Basically I had the idea that Whales contributed to the high abundance of krill in the same way cows contribute to a high abundance […]

Climbing Loaches

Here we gave loaches the opportunity to climb a waterfall over a glass sheet. They were enthusiastic and climbed the sheet without any interference from us. We had been thinking of activities to avoid boredom in captive fish – but that’s another story – here we embedded a […]

Simulated fish – agent based models

Here fish are simulated in a flow field – the tiny white bubbles are designed to show how the currents are moving in two Von Karman streets behind two circular obstructions. each fish looks at its nearest 3 neighbours and moderates its direction of travel based on three […]

Vectrino ADCP for flow imaging

Here we made a flume in which we could make water flow, 3D printed an enlarged scale model of a small fish (a hill stream loach), and made an XYZ plotter type thing to move an ADCP around to measure flow. An ADCP is an Acoustic Doppler Current […]

Popular Press

The Guardian used one of my videos of the movement of particles in the tides in Swansea Bay to background a section on the proposed tidal lagoon in Swansea. This is the featured video linked above. New Scientist published a piece on my work with Tuna navigation… it […]