Dr Georgina Hunt
Locations
Dr Georgina Hunt
Research Fellow
- About
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- Research
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Research Areas
Biological and Environmental Sciences
Research Specialisms
- Marine Sciences
- Marine Biology
Our research specialisms are based on the Higher Education Classification of Subjects (HECoS) which is HESA open data, published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.
Current Research
PREDICT project in collaboration with the University of Aberdeen, Ørsted, and the Environmental Research Institute (ERI) at the University of the Highlands and Islands: The aim of the project is to investigate fish migrations and how predictions of oceanographic changes to productive regions in time and space may be impacted by climate change, and knock-on effects on top predators (seabirds and marine mammals). Georgina utilises large datasets from historical ICES International Bottom Trawl Survey (IBTS) to MMO commercial landings data, to identify the locations and timings of where multiple fish species (e.g., sandeels, herring, mackerel, sprat, and juvenile gadoid species) are available as common prey. This will enable us to recreate annual fish migration routes and generate seasonal maps of overlap for multiple species to elucidate spatio-temporal trends in growth rates and track annual cohorts with a greater degree of precision. Georgina will create of individual seasonal maps to help identify where planned locations of future windfarms may overlap with high use areas in the annual cycle of fish movement during their migration. PREDICT will provide essential research to ensure that offshore wind projects can achieve net zero targets in balance with nature, minimising the impact future developments might have on seabirds and marine mammals.
Past Research
PhD in Fisheries Science from Newcastle University and Centre for Environment Fisheries and Aquaculture Sciences (Cefas), 2021. This PhD examined historical and contemporary patterns of spatial and temporal change in demersal fish species in the western North Sea at long-term time scales. Georgina’s research bought together multiple quantitative fisheries datasets (e.g., catch, size, stomach content and stable isotope data) to understand how demersal fish species (and their benthic prey) have responded to human-induced activities (e.g., bottom trawling, climate change, eutrophication) since the late 19th century. Georgina interrogated large, complex and sometimes data-poor datasets, as well as reviewed historical design plans and methods to reconstruct a like-for-like late 19th century beam trawl for use in contemporary resurveys and to facilitate comparisons of trawl catches between historical and recent time periods.