Peter Chaniotis – Marine Ecosystems Team

When did you start at JNCC? I started work at JNCC in October 2009.

What is your role in JNCC? I am currently one of the Marine Ecosystems Team Leaders working alongside two others. The work portfolio of our team is particularly diverse and broad, but is all centred largely around undertaking marine ecosystem health assessments and reporting on the results at a range of spatial scales; from individual marine protected areas right up to entire marine regions. My particular role is to lead our teams’ work on marine protected areas both nationally and internationally and to support wider marine ecosystem health assessment work.

Have you had any other roles at JNCC? When I started at JNCC in 2009 I came in as a marine protected areas communications officer; drawing on my background and expertise in marine science communication. I quickly moved across to being a technical advisor focussed on collaborative working with Scottish Natural Heritage and Marine Scotland to deliver work on the Scottish marine protected areas project. I then took on a project manager role overseeing our wider marine protected areas coordination work in 2014 before being promoted to team leader level in 2016 and the position I am currently in.

What do you like the most about working at JNCC? There are lots of positives to working within JNCC. One of the main perks is the challenge of working out how to deliver effective ‘on the ground’ conservation outcomes that are underpinned by ambitious policies set out by UK governments. The opportunity to engage and work with people from many different walks of life is also very rewarding and the opportunity to work on lots of different aspects of marine conservation and pick up additional knowledge and skills along the way has been really great.

What’s been your greatest achievement at JNCC? Definitely the day that the formal announcement around the designation of nature conservation marine protected areas in Scotland’s seas came out. Such a huge amount of work went into that project and to see the sites I had worked on legally designated and out there for all to see gave me a sense of great achievement.