I am a career fisheries scientists who started at the then MAFF Fisheries Laboratory, Lowestoft in 1964, and retired from it in CEFAS days in 2004. To begin with I worked on tagging and assessing flatfish stocks at Iceland and in the North Sea, but also spent 1976-77 as the first scientific advisor to DG9 and DG14 in Brussels during the formulation of the CFP.

My association with SAGB dates back to 1981 when I became head of the shellfish science team at Lowestoft when Eric Edwards became SAGB Director. I attended the SAGB committees, and became deeply involved with advice to MAFF, SAGB and SFCs on the containment and eradication of Bonamia, lobster management and stock enhancement, the management of cockle, oyster, scallop, whelk and razor fisheries, and projects on gravel dredging at Race Bank and Hastings Shingle Bank, to name just some of the highlights that culminated in the Walne Lecture of 1999During that period I also attended the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea in Copenhagen as chair of the Shellfish Committee, and later of the Consultative Committee, which reorganised ICES science in the 1990s.

Since 'retirement' I have returned to the shellfish fold, taking part in a range of MSC assessments of shrimp and lobster fisheries in North America and Greenland, attending the SAGB committees, and writing contract reports on the Shellfish Industry Development Strategy, the National Shellfish Resource Group, and the Management of Brown Crab fisheries, on which I am currently leading for SAGB.

Along the way the SAGB has been kind enough to appoint me as an Honorary Life Member and Council Member, and in 2009-11 I was chair of the Crustacean Committee , and also an honorary auditor.