My career in fisheries started in 2000 working as a summer student for the Environment Agency, assisting in the annual surveys of the Dales rivers, and have remained here ever since, undertaking a wide and varied array of tasks, as a Fisheries Scientist. Like so many I graduated from Sparsholt College with a BSc Honours in Aquaculture & Fisheries Science. Recently I went back to college, but this time as a part-time lecturer at Bishop Burton College. At the weekend come rain or shine I can be found next to some type of water, filling a net with roach or my freezer with cod (I wish).

e-mail: neast@ifm.org.uk

Branch chair: Ian Dolben

My early career was spent in a variety of sexual positions, generally involving numbers of hormonally challenged coarse fish and their eventual progeny. All this took place on a sewage treatment works in Rotherham – I lived on site in the delightfully named ‘No3 Water Pollution Cottage -always gets a laugh that one. Sadly re-organisation and a lack of management support meant re-location to York, joining the other piscatorially challenged scientists chopping up fish, visiting fish farms and splashing about in rivers.

Fast forward to the present day and having survived numerous re-organisations, name changes and even BRITE, have now achieved best ever job of Fisheries Scientist in Head Office team, working for the legendary Miran Aprahamian. Along the way acquired job of IFM Careers Officer, and have now re-entered fishing circles but have graduated to salmon and sea trout fishing (well, to be accurate fishing in rivers known to be frequented by salmon and sea trout…..yet to get one on the hook).

e-mail: careers@ifm.org.uk