Who am I?
Scientist, wildlife photographer & conservationist
I’m a fish ecologist based in Norway, working primarily on northeast Atlantic stocks and fisheries. My research interests focus on the impacts of climate change and human activities on fish populations through the use of biological proxies such as otoliths.
Interestingly, I did not grow up with the sea or had any particular flame for its inhabitants. I was born in the middle of the French Alps, barely ever touched a fishing rod, and was far more interested in hiking and skiing than scuba diving. What I did grow up with, was a profound love and passion for the natural world. At 6, Jurassic Park made me dream of becoming a paleontologist. At 10, my love for reptiles made my mom’s heart skip a beat when I was found petting a large boa through the gridded back of a terrarium, only partly dissimulated behind the next section of the zoo. And at 17, I left high school fully decided to become an exotic vet. But the road of life is a windy one, things turn and twist and drop, and next thing I knew I was on my way to Norway to start a PhD in sub-arctic fish ecology.
From that moment, it was only a matter of time before photography entered my life as well – the fjords are hard to resist after all. While I still look back fondly on my first year dabbling into landscape photography and learning the rudiments of the craft, something fell in place the day I was lent a tele lens to play with at the park. And now here I am, countless, priceless hours spent roaming the forests or laying by the water, half as many spent sorting and editing the results, and more money invested into gear than I’ll ever be willing to admit.
There is a unique sense of satisfying frustration to wildlife photography, when your patience and numerous failures are finally rewarded by irreplaceable moments shared with another animal, never truly letting you into their home but comfortable enough to let you peer through the windows. Perhaps the scientist in me finds beauty in seeing living beings where there are too often just numbers. Or perhaps the photographer in me has been made all too aware of the threats that our ecosystems face, and finds a renewed purpose to documenting them and sharing them with the world.
