15 Apr 2021
Alex McGhee, who is business intelligence manager at Linnaeus, is helping the Sea Turtle Rescue Alliance as a data lead to apply data science to help vets caring for the reptiles.
Paul Imrie
Job Title
Alex McGhee, business intelligence manager at Linnaeus, who is visiting the Maldives to help deliver a project to protect endangered sea turtles.
A vet has flown to the Maldives to help efforts to preserve and rescue the endangered sea turtle.
Alex McGhee, who is business intelligence manager at Linnaeus, has flown 5,500 miles to act as data lead for the Sea Turtle Rescue Alliance (STRA), so he can help vets on the ground apply data science to their care of the reptiles.
The STRA is an interactive global network for sea turtle vets, and rescue and rehabilitation centres, which between them are dedicated to helping sea turtles. Six of the seven species of turtle are endangered through human behaviour, many victims of poachers and increasing plastic in the sea.
Dr McGhee is working with the Olive Ridley Project, based in the Maldives, which was founded in 2013 to protect turtles and their habitat. He is setting up the project with practice management software for vets to capture clinical records that allow them to track and care for turtles over a long period of time.
If the pilot works, it has potential to be rolled out in other locations.
Dr McGhee – previously a vet at a mixed practice in Devon, but now head of Linnaeus’ business intelligence engineers and analysts – said: “The aim is twofold – to build up knowledge and to help put experienced vets in touch with the centres that need their help.”
Dr McGhee added: “We’ll be setting up the software, making sure the vets can operate it and then adding all their existing data to it.
“We’re giving them a powerful tool to capture clinical records and manage turtles over a long period of time. There are lots of vets in different centres across the world who work with sea turtles, and the work of the STRA is about connecting those different vets around the world.
“These valuable creatures are hugely important to marine ecosystems and have travelled our seas for the past 100 million years, so I’m delighted to be able to play a part in their conservation.”
