Steve Mudge BSc PhD(Wales) FRSA

Biography

My B.Sc. in Marine Biology / Oceanography was taken here in Menai Bridge in 1981. I undertook Ph.D. research under the direction of Dennis Crisp (NERC Unit of Marine Invertebrate Ecology) and Frank Rose (ICI) and developed a series of non-toxic antifouling paints based on the specific inhibition of carbonic anhydrase. After my postdoctoral research into the estuarine geochemistry of plutonium at Lancaster University, I joined the lecturing staff in SOS (1991). I was promoted to senior lecturer in 1999.

Research Interests

My current research has several themes but they are all related to environmental contamination:

Tracing contamination using lipid biomarkers - organic compounds can be used to identify both the sources of contamination and the processes that it undergoes in the marine environment. Typical compounds used include sterols, PAHs, fatty acids and fatty alcohols. Using chemometric methods including multivariate statistics (PCA and PLS), specific source signatures can be followed in the sea. These techniques are being used to investigate the dispersal of materials in near shore environments, recording land use and anthropogenic source changes in cores and diagenetic rates.

Environmental radioactivity - the variability of contaminant concentrations in surface sediments is being investigated at several spatial scales as this has dramatic effects on the way we sample. Previous research in the Ribble Estuary indicated relatively large changes in concentrations of radionuclides and other contaminants within a few centimetres of each other. This work is demonstrating that these effects have a greater effect than the grain size changes up to a certain scale. Methods that provide statistically significant samples are being developed

Cleaning oil off beaches - after investigating the effect of vegetable oils as pollutants in the marine environment, my group has moved on to using biodiesel to clean oil off beaches in an environmentally friendly way. These vegetable oil derivatives act both as a chemical solvent and stimulate bacteria to co-metabolise oil hydrocarbons. Laboratory experiments and initial field trials have been very successful and further larger trials are planned for Canada in May 2001.