Mindset Adventures With Saz

My Sunday evening has been spent putting the finishing touches to a paper that's been six years in the making. Back in 2020, Sue Fenton and I saw an opportunity to turn RowAround Scotland into a citizen science project. Instead of simply rowing around the Scottish coastline, volunteers from coastal rowing clubs towed specially designed nets behind their St Ayles skiffs to collect microplastic samples from nearshore waters. What started as an idea over coffee (and a few net tests from a canoe!) grew into a nationwide project involving 54 sampling locations and hundreds of volunteer rowers. Now, after years of fieldwork, laboratory analysis and far too many hours with spreadsheets and manuscript revisions, the paper is finally ready for submission. The results show that microplastics are widespread in Scottish nearshore waters, but perhaps more importantly, they demonstrate that trained citizen scientists can collect robust environmental data at a national scale. As microplastic poll...

  Hello. Have we met? I’ve connected with a wide range of people across marine science, environmental research, and the outdoor sector, but there’s a good chance we haven’t met in person yet, so here's a quick introduction. Here’s what I get up to in my day job: I’m Saz Reed (Sarah on official paperwork), a marine scientist with a background in field research, professional diving, and commercial skippering. I contract this work through my company, Leven Environmental Ltd. My work is grounded in hands-on experience from working in various marine systems around the world, whether that’s on research vessels, underwater, or in remote research stations. Currently, my main interests in marine science are marine consents, regulation, and the environmental impacts of offshore developments (including underwater noise), with a particular focus on bridging scientific assessment with real-world offshore operations. When I am not working as a Marine Consents Manager on Offshore Wind Farms, I ru...

On reflection, if I were to summarise a year of being a director/entrepreneur/contractor/freelancer into two words it would be - happiness & balance.  I have been quiet on this blog for the past few years because I work in a corporate/commercial/consultancy world at the moment where I am not able to share as much as I used to about what we get up to! I will share stories and accounts here where I can.  Last year I set up Leven Environmental Ltd on Companies House after changing the name many times in March 2024 as a way for me to work for myself. I had recently read Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal Newport and I had been speaking to a few friends about how to go out there on my own as a freelancer/contractor. I don't have all the skills for this but I was given an opportunity to become a contractor that would give me the flexibility I was longing for and I am learning along the way. Running two businesses means spinning plates...

Me, Eilidh and Sav decided last year that we were going to head off on a bikepack trip! Sav found the TDC on Bikepacking.com after we had decided on Italy after finding good flights. We planned everything before we set off, got our bikes serviced and worked out how much food and supplied to take!   A half day to set us off on the TDC! On the Sunday arriving in Aosta after lots of buses, we set up our bikes and got packed up on the Monday. We ended up delaying the lift up toward Entroubles by a few hours, where we planned to start our ride as we had a few mechanicals to sort out, which involved borrowing the van next doors hammer... It was a bit of a hectic and tiring start! We set off up the road in the heat of the day and did a massive climb up to 2000m. We found a beautiful campspot which had a great dipping venue for an evening wash to get an early nights sleep before the next big day! The wildflowers and views were just what we had wanted to see on this route, insane! TDC Day 2...