Craig Stenton

“Hey, do you want to hear the most annoying sound in the world?”

– Lloyd Christmas, Dumb & Dumber (1994)

I’ve somehow (and quite accidentally) made a career out of irritating things – mainly snails.

This started with poking snails during my BSc. (Hons) Marine Biology & Oceanography at the University of Plymouth, progressed to prodding snails working as an Ecotoxicologist, and finally back to poking snails studying a PhD at Edinburgh Napier University. Over a decade of bothering snails.

But this was all for good reason – to find out how aquatic creatures cope with the environmental challenges they currently face, and the ones just around the corner. For my PhD, I chose to look at underwater noise – both the impacts that this can have on its own, but also how it alters creatures’ ability to cope with other pressures.

I joined OSC in 2021, finally trading snails for whales (for now at least). I won’t be annoying any of them personally this time – just helping to make sure the noises we make don’t either.