Ruth Callaway

Ruth Callaway is a marine ecologist working at Swansea University, Wales, UK. She has a PhD in benthic ecology and over 20 years’ experience of working in marine and coastal environments. Ruth is particularly interested in applied issues, such as the impact of human activities or infrastructure development on benthic communities and biodiversity, as well as coastal governance and management. She has worked on the link between commercial fisheries and biodiversity patterns, causes of cockle mortalities in a commercially harvested estuary, as well as the impact of climate change on coastal marshland. Ruth is a council member of the international Estuarine & Coastal Science Association. She is increasingly involved in research related to opportunities and threats of marine renewable infrastructure. A persistent soft spot is her interest in benthic species that form biogenic reefs, such as the tube-dwelling polychaetes Lanice conchilega and Sabellaria alveolata, and their impact and role in ecosystems. Currently she is working for the EU projects SEACAMS2 and ECOSTRUCTURE, which focuse on collaborative research with marine renewable energy companies in order to assess construction and operational effects on the natural environment, explore opportunities to mitigate negative impact, and generally to de-risk the consenting process.