After I finished my undergrad in Aquatic Bioscience at Glasgow University, I was employed to work on a series of industry contracts focused on methods of reducing bycatch in the west coast Nephrops fishery (= Scottish langoustines, or Norway lobster) and improving product quality in the seafood industry. This work involved going out to sea on commercial fishing vessels (mostly out of Stornoway harbour (Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides) for a week at a time, a few times per year, and basically identifying and counting everything that came up in the nets. It also turns out that those little wooden fishing boats make me sick to my stomach, and one of the few things I was able to do while waiting for the nets to come up was learning bird photography (you can see some of the results of that over in the Seabirds gallery). Getting that practice in on the birds that would follow us around was incredibly helping in learning the basics and cementing this as a long-term hobby for me.