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New researcher to strengthen offshore monitoring
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A new addition to SAEON’s Egagasini Node is Charles von der Meden, a recent PhD graduate from Rhodes University.
He joins the Egagasini team as a postdoctoral researcher working with Drs Lara Atkinson and Wayne Goschen, primarily to expand long-term monitoring of the offshore benthic habitats associated with SAEON’s Algoa Bay sentinel site. This will include precursors such as classifying and mapping benthic habitats with the use of SAEON’s deep-sea camera (Ski-MonkeyIII). He also plans to explore the use of long-term oceanographic data available for the area to investigate inshore-offshore links.
Born and schooled in Durban, Charles has been fortunate enough to entertain his love of the outdoors during his undergraduate studies in zoology at the University of Cape Town and in his time at Rhodes University, culminating in completion of his PhD in marine biology in 2010.
Coastal monitoring and research
The main focus of his thesis was the effect of coastline topography on the dispersal, settlement and recruitment of intertidal mussels along the south east coast. Charles continued the work at much smaller scales too, trying to establish rates of early post-settlement mortality and exploring settlement cues and behaviour to understand their contribution to the occurrence of intertidal patterns and selectivity of settlement habitat.
After graduating, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Rhodes University, looking at questions surrounding links between offshore larval abundance and onshore settlement in the Algoa Bay region.
Immediately before joining SAEON, he spent two months working in Sodwana Bay in Northern KwaZulu-Natal teaching and diving for a non-profit organisation. Following this, he volunteered aboard the oceanographic research ship Dr Fridtjof Nansen for the Benguela Current Commission’s Hake Survey and in between, spent time doing a bit of travelling in our beautiful South Africa.
