Working in torrential rain and then going home to spend hours in the laboratory are all in a day’s work for Dr Nadine Strydom, marine biologist specialising in larval fishes at the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (SAIAB) in Grahamstown. And she loves it!
Strydom, who hails from a long line of “fishing fanatics”, has had a passion for the natural world, and especially the ocean, since early childhood. She completed a PhD in ichthyology at Rhodes University, where the focus of her work was on larval fishes.
She spends many hours peering down the microscope or between guidebooks. It can take days to identify a particular larval fish. Once the identification process is complete the true nature of the research begins, relating these larvae to their environment and understanding how they interact with the environment around them.
Strydom is the only person in South Africa who does research on larval fishes, linking the larvae found in estuaries and the ocean to the adults and attempting to understand their behaviour, habitat requirements, feeding and movement patterns.
Larval fishes are key indicators of biodiversity change and the importance of understanding larval fish dynamics has been highlighted around the world. The success of every fish population is ultimately linked to the success of the larval phase under natural conditions.
Strydom, a trailblazer in her field, was the first woman to be employed as a scientist at the former JLB Smith Institute of Ichthyology (now SAIAB) and is one of only two women scientists employed there.
“The good news is that more young women are realising that there is a career for them in the sciences, particularly marine science, and numbers of women are increasing at universities,” she says.
She treats her female students as “unstereotypically” as possible, involving them in all aspects associated with this kind of research, including boating and skippering.
She also feels strongly that science and the looming global biodiversity crisis need to be communicated to decision-makers and society, and has written several popular articles to make science more accessible.
Her work has a strong future orientation. She makes sure that the larvae found are drawn and published and specimens are deposited into the national fish collection at SAIAB for future use by researchers and students of this field and hopes to produce a guide for the larvae of South African coastal fishes.