Catriona grew up in the north of Tasmania, moving to Adelaide in high school to study music at the conservatorium. A change in career aspirations led her to complete a science degree at the Australian National University. She then spent three years working and travelling in Canada, USA, Mexico and the Caribean making adventure videos, crewing on sail boats and making chocolate.
Returning to Australia, she joined the Commonwealth public service, working on the analysis, design, development and implementation of energy, greenhouse and other environmental performance data gathering and reporting systems, including the online greenhouse data collection and reporting application OSCAR (Online System for Comprehensive Activity Reporting) which is used by industry to report energy use and emissions to government, thus underpinning the Australian Emissions Trading Scheme.
Catriona has been working at the Australian Antarctic Division since 2007 on the development and implementation of a suite of software tools to collect and present cetacean related data from a central database. The main aim of this work is to produce a structured, high quality dataset that will be extremely valuable to government, researchers and industry.
From November 2008 to January 2009, Catriona was a member of the whale aerial survey programme, helping to collect data on Antarctic minke whale sightings in the sea ice and open water near Casey Station, Antarctica.
On the Antarctic Whale Expedition aboard the Tangaroa, Catriona will manage data: looking after data curation and backup as well as data communications. She will send and receive information about the ice edge, chlorophyll layers in the water and other oceanographic data to help the research team decide where to go to have the best chance of whale sightings.
