Jonathan Grey
Freshwater Ecologist and Research & Conservation Officer for Wild Trout Trust
Always fascinated by what he couldn’t see beneath the water surface, Jon pursued an academic career focussing primarily on blue skies research but has in recent years side-stepped into the muck and bullets of practical conservation in rivers and lakes.
Following a PhD on marine microbial food webs based primarily in Antarctica and Australia, Jon focussed on the use of stable isotopes to study trophic interactions and pioneered early work in the UK using these techniques on freshwaters subsidised by terrestrial production. He spent 5 years at the Max Planck Institute for Limnology as a Research Group Leader studying the role of methane-derived carbon within food webs, primarily in lakes, then returned to the UK to spend 10 years at Queen Mary London.
Jon is currently a Professor in Practice at Lancaster University (0.2fte) and the Research & Conservation Officer for the Wild Trout Trust (0.8fte). He is passionate about sound science underpinning all the advice and practical support that the Trust offers to empower individuals and grass-roots organisations to improve aquatic habitat, using trout as a sentinel or totemic species. More technical advice and support is provided to a plethora of UK conservation NGOs and Agencies.
Jon is a lifetime member of the FBA, edited the FBA News with Mel Fletcher for a number of years, and incorporated the use of FBA facilities at both Windermere and the River Lab into residential field-courses when he led the Aquatic MSc Programmes at QMUL.