Helen Bostock joins the Young Blake Expedition to the Kermadecs
as part of the expert crew chosen by the Pew Environment
Group.
Helen has been working as a marine geologist at the National
Institute of Water and Atmospheric Science (NIWA) for the last 5
years. She says,
I probably
became a geologist because my dad used to drag me on field trips as
a teenager and I also loved the outdoors (tramping, skiing, rock
climbing, mountaineering) as a child. As a kid we always lived by
the sea and spent a lot of time swimming, snorkelling and kayaking.
I also wanted to be a great explorer
Helen Bostock
Helen realised, after she undertook geological mapping
expeditions to Chile and Greenland during her undergraduate degree,
that the last place on earth that hadn't been explored yet were the
oceans.
As a scientist Helen's main interests are in the interaction
between the oceans and the climate. She describes herself as a
geochemist - a mix between a geologist and a chemist. She uses the
chemistry of the water and the organisms that used to live in the
ocean in the past to interpret changes in the climate over 100s to
1000s of years. Her specific interest is in ocean acidification -
the changing pH of the oceans due to the uptake of CO2, and how
this might affect the organisms that have shells. She has been on 5
scientific voyages in the last 9 years, leading one of them to the
Southern Ocean, south of New Zealand. She has had several
postgraduate students participate on these voyages in the last few
years and enjoys teaching and learning.
She still loves the outdoors and regularly get out into the New
Zealand bush and mountains to go tramping, mountain biking and
skiing, often with kids to do their Duke of Edinburgh expeditions.
She is a girl guide ranger leader and a qualified life guard, so
spent half her weekends during summer at the beach. She is also a
keen gardener and loves to grow things to cook and eat.
Helen has a BA in Natural Sciences from Jesus College,
University of Cambridge, followed by an MSc in Geology from
University of Cambridge and a PhD in Earth and Marine Sciences from
The Australian National University in Canberra. She has been
working at NIWA for the last 5 and half years since finished her
PhD.