Peter Bell is a Research Technologist who has worked for Plant and Food Research in Nelson, New Zealand for the last 10 years. He has a BSc in Ecology and Masters in Marine Science where he examined the comparative performance of a range of anaesthetic/removal agents for Pāua (Abalone) in culture. His first professional roles post university, were maintaining river and rainfall monitoring networks and measuring river flows in Taranaki and then Brisbane. On returning to marine science, he was involved in the development and on vessel testing of trawl technologies as part of a large government/industry commercialisation programme “Precision Seafood Harvesting”.

Working on a range of industry vessels during the development and testing stages provided a unique insight into aligning science goals alongside commercial realities and perspectives. More recently he has worked on open ocean aquaculture technology development as part of the “Reimagining Aquaculture” programme, included aspects such as early novel prototype development and testing, gear assembly, biofouling assessments and operation of some of the sensor equipment. Other smaller projects have involved a multiyear underwater baited camera surveys as well as leading a blue skies project trialling the decellularization of seaweed to provide potential scaffolds for cell culture. Most recently I have been leading a research aim within an internally PFR funded programme developing integrated tools for characterising biofouling communities, both their composition and biomass/occlusion. A particular focus of this work is examining how we can offset PFRs limited background/resources in this space taxonomically by leveraging machine learning and genetic metabarcoding technologies and aligning our sampling processes to work optimally for these. These tools will support wider research efforts focusing on the management and/or utilisation of biofoul biomass.