When I was growing up, I was never completely sure what job I wanted to have as an adult. I loved doing many different things, including basketball, tennis, pottery, and playing guitar. I was curious about lots of subjects at school and interested in how the world worked, but I found it hard to choose just one path.
When it came time to apply for university, I still wasn’t certain what to study. In the end, I chose Environmental Science because I enjoyed learning about the Earth and the living things on it. It felt like an important area of study, as I was learning lots about the impacts of climate change from the School Strike 4 Climate movement.
As part of my degree, I had the opportunity to travel to Fiji. I spent two weeks on Drawaqa Island, where I collected tiny ocean animals called zooplankton and studied them under a microscope. Zooplankton are an important food source for manta rays, and manta rays are important to local communities because they attract tourists and support marine conservation.
Today, my research focuses on feral cat diets in Tasmania. Feral cats are not very different to pet cats, but in the wild they attack native animals like bandicoots, quolls, and penguins. Investigating what they eat in different places can tell us about how they live and how to stop them from impacting native wildlife.
