Mick Mackey will give a lunchtime talk at Museum of Archaeology Dublin for Coca-Cola Clean Coasts Week.

Mick is a Marine Biologist that graduated from the Institute of Antarctic & Southern Ocean Studies (Tasmania) in 1995. As a part of his studies, Mick travelled to Antarctica studying the productivity of sea ice algae during the southern winter. Mick went on to spend a further three months with Australian Antarctic Division participating in a landmark marine mammal survey of the Southern Ocean. He then travelled to Europe in 1996 where he worked at University College Cork (UCC) researching marine mammal strandings, the bycatch of marine mammals in a variety of Irish gillnet fisheries and the abundance and distribution of cetaceans and seabirds off the Irish west coast.

Mick then returned to the Antarctic in 2009, where he worked on Bird Island, South Georgia for the British Antarctic Survey. During his 30 months on Bird Island, Mick researched the summer breeding biology of the Antarctic Fur Seals and the winter feeding biology of the Leopard Seals. After spending a winter in Northern Norway photographing the northern lights, Mick is now the Cruise Leader with UCC’s ObSERVE Aerial project that investigates the offshore distribution and abundance of cetacean and seabird populations in Irish territorial waters. Mick is also an experienced photographer that has hosted a number of solo seascape and wildlife photographic exhibitions.