My passion is bringing creativity, scientific rigour, and practical skills to help your group understand the marine environment at an appropriate level of inquiry. Your firm may already have excellent theoretical ecologists, environmental impact scientists, or policy-makers, but lack cost-effective in-house resources to develop your own data, procedures, presentations, or instruments. I like to spearhead invertebrate taxonomy work or just provide you with an outside opinion and an opportunity to brainstorm. If your investigation requires a unique, one-off solution, perhaps I can facilitate. I really enjoy studying the process of how people do science with respect to the actual measurements they need, cutting through false assumptions, and integrating the appropriate technology with your existing resources. I have worked hard to develop the engineering skills and supplier/service relationships necessary for turning an idea into reality.

Experience

I am familiar with many aspects of macrofaunal and some meiofaunal work.  I have designed and undertaken or assisted with surveys from intertidal estuaries to continental shelf canyons. This includes live culture, sampling, preservation, extraction, mounting (community samples or single individuals), and curation work. I especially enjoy working with polychaete fauna, but kinorhynchs are a close second. I am most enthusiastic about educational and interdisciplinary projects that integrate environmental information with biological observations. Many clients find me handy to have around because of my experiences with several of the most important tools in marine science:

Sediment Profile Imagery: SPI-Scan, tSPI, and traditional REMOTS-style systems

Bottom Samples: 100 and 675 kHz sidescan sonar survey, analysis/reduction, and mosaicing. Day, VanVeen, US-NEL, Petite Ponar, Ekman, and Petersen grabs. Beach Seine nets. Beam, naturalist, and otter trawls. ROVs, drop cams, photoquadrats, fish, sedentary, and mobile invertebrate video transects including chemical cryptofauna extraction. Manual diver, piston, and multi-corers for biological, nutrient, toxicity, sedimentological, and porewater protocols.

Water Column: CTD, Van Dorn and Nansen bottles. DOBIE wave gauges and Stowaway loggers. GPS drifters. Standard, bongo, vertical, and closing plankton nets. Limnological flow profiling equipment.

Other equipment: Nephelometers; colorimeters; spectrophotometers; pH meters; permeable membrane and FOXY oxygen probes; gas chromatographs;Carlo-Erba CHN analyser; scanning and transmission electron microscopes; zoom, biological, phase-contrast, and Nomarski interference light micrscope systems; several underwater video, still (wide and macro) photography systems.

Vessels: NZ LLO ticket (commercial marine vessels R/V Nauplius and R/V Bubble) limited to <20m with <50 passengers, operations on vessels ranging from 3-75 m OL.

SCUBA Diving: DAN Oxygen provider, NAUI/PADI certifications (>400 hrs), 100 FSW AAUS rating, tropical and temperate wet- and drysuit diving in blue, open, and confined environments

Computer Application Proficiencies: MATLAB, MiniTab, Primer, Surfer, SolidWorks, Power CAD Pro, Microsoft Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, Open Office Suite, Adobe Photoshop/Imageready, GoLive, PageMaker, GIMP, ImageJ, Scion, Caris' HIPS & SIPS, and familiarity with ARC suite and GRASS GIS.

Publications / Presentations

Paavo, B. (2007) Soft-sediment benthos of Aramoana and Blueskin Bay (Otago, New Zealand) and effects of dredge-spoil disposal. PhD thesis, University of Otago Department of Marine Science, 498 pages.

Probert, P.K., B. Paavo (2004) Polychaetes. CD-ROM Review. New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research 38:753-754

Bailey-Brock, J.H., B. Paavo, B.M. Barrett, and J. Dreyer (2002) Polychaetes associated with a tropical ocean outfall; synthesis of a biomonitoring program off O'ahu, Hawai'i. Pacific Science 56(4):459-479.

Bailey-Brock, J.H., B. Paavo, B.M. Barrett, and J. Dreyer (2001) Changes in pollution indicators at the Sand Island Sewage Outfall. OCEANS 2001 MTS/IEEE Proceedings.

Paavo, B.L., J.H. Bailey-Brock, and B. Akesson (2000) Life history and description of a new species of Ophryotrocha (Polychaeta, Dorvilleidae) associated with the sewage outfalls of O'ahu, Hawai'i. Sarsia 85(3):251-264

Paavo, B.L. (1998) Morphology and life history of an undescribed Ophryotrocha species (Polychaeta: Dorvilleidae) and its possible role as an indicator of organic enrichment. Pacific Science 52(2):191

Selected Consulting Works ('Grey' literature available upon request)

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Environmental Impacts of dredge spoil from Pearl Harbor, Honolulu, Hawai'i. Prepared for the US federal government and USACE.

Hawai'i Kai Marina: Two years of water quality monitoring. Prepared for the Hawai'i Kai Home Owners Association.

Environmental impacts of Poydactylus sexfilis mariculture. Prepared for the Hawai'i state government.

Invertebrates of Little Harbour, Stewart Island. Prepared for a private client.

Soft-bottom invertebrate communities near dispersive dredge spoil disposal areas off Dunedin, New Zealand. Prepared for the Otago Regional Council and Port Otago Limited.

Marine investigation of the Bluff municipal sewage outfall. Prepared for the Invercargill City Council.

New Zealand Marine Sciences Society Conference, Nelson 2006

Paavo, B.L.

Oral Presentation: Dispersive dredge spoil disposal in New Zealand

Sediment Profile Imagery Conference, Galway, Ireland 2006

Paavo, B.L.

Oral Presentation: Convergent evolution: the NZ SPI-Scan system

New Zealand Marine Sciences Society Conference, Wellington, 2005

Paavo, B.L. and P.K. Probert

Oral Presentation: Effects of dredge spoil disposal on macrofauna of wave-dominated soft-sediments

Paavo, B.L.

Poster Presentation: Affordable sediment profile imagery v2

New Zealand Marine Sciences Society Conference, Dunedin, June 2004

Paavo, B.L.

Oral Presentation: Soft-bottom invertebrate assemblages near dredge spoil disposal areas

Paavo, B.L.

Poster Presentation: Simulated dredge spoil burial of Zethalia zelandica (Winner of "Best Southland Poster' prize)

Joint conference of the New Zealand Marine Sciences Society and the Australasian Society for Phycology and Aquatic Botany, Auckland, September 2003

172 Mystery Creek Road, RD1 Ohaupo 3881, New Zealand
paavo@benthicscience.com
Voice/Fax +64-07-839-3466 mobile call or text: +64-021-189-3459