Marine Scotland Science: directory

Lauren Clayton

Fisheries Assessment and Advice Programme
Fisheries Advice Group
Fisheries Scientist – Remote Electronic Monitoring (REM)

E-mail: lauren.clayton@gov.scot

Marine Scotland Science, Marine Laboratory, 375 Victoria Road, Aberdeen, AB11 9DB, UK

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Details of specialism

In general terms I am interested in the use of Electronic Monitoring (EM) in fisheries, as well as improving and advancing electronic technologies for remote reporting and monitoring (such as Automated Image Recognition; AIR). Additionally, I am working in the novel field of utilising EM data to investigate other parameters such as identifying types of marine litter discarded at sea visible to EM systems. 

Within the broad topic area of my role at Marine Scotland, some of the main areas my work currently focuses on include:

• collating and analysing EM data for the Scottish electro-fishery for razor clams and matching this to landings data to make broad scale inferences on the fishery
• collaborating with external partners, developing Machine Learning (ML) algorithms for AIR, by collating and providing training data sets to assist in the ML process. These consist of imagery from EM systems with corresponding annotations of the catch in view e.g. species, counts, measurements etc
• estimating the types and distributions of marine litter observed via EM
• performing quality assurance checks of Scottish pelagic landings and dock side sampling data for catch estimation and submission to ICES

Main policy links

• inshore fisheries and coastal communities
• catching policy and future fisheries management

External committees and responsibilities

• member of the ICES Working Group on Technology Integration for Fishery-Dependent Data 
• member of SMARTFISH H2020 innovation for sustainable fisheries project (WP4 and WP8)
• member of ICES Working Group on Marine Litter
• member of Marine Scotland Science’s Athena SWAN team
• committee member of Marine Scotland Women and Equalities Network
• founding member of Marine Scotland’s Early Career Scientist Network