I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Royal NIOZ Netherlands Institute for Sea Research. My office is at the NIOZ, Texel, The Netherlands, but my prime area of interest are the intertidal mudflats of the Wadden Sea, West Africa and the Middle East. During my doctoral research I have led various research expeditions to Barr Al Hikman in the Sultanate of Oman. We started visiting this relatively pristine mudflat area since 2008, and returned every year up to 2018. First as a group of adventurous volunteers, but since 2011 under the umbrella of the NIOZ.
The Barr Al Hikman work started with a general description of the area, mainly focusing on shorebirds and the benthos. In my PhD work I studied the enigmatic Crab Plover.
In my recent work I focus on the migratory routine of Bar-tailed Godwits wintering in West Africa and Oman. We successfully tracked Bar-tailed Godwits to their breeding grounds and back. For more information and a live stream to the migration of the Bar-tailed Godwits, keep an eye on this site.