Willing expertise

The key experts who very kindly replied included Dr Anne Sawyer. She had the key role in developing a potential tool to combat Myrtle rust, using silencing RNA. She had never heard of didymo, but was keen to help. Others such as Prof Susie Wood, Dr Alexis Marshall and Dr Jon Bray had crucial didymo experience and knowledge and were also keen to help, and all were very generous with their time - all agreeing to have zoom meetings with me (a complete didymo novice). There were then some in-person meetings, including with Professor Arvind Varsani, as he was flying back from Antarctica to the USA. Then meeting with Prof Jemma Geoghegan, a real star amongst evolutionary virologists - a specialty I had never heard of but that became apparent that the project needed.

There followed very constructive meetings with stakeholders such as Fish & Game and ECAN. There were also helpful emails, including some that were critical and discouraging, which all helped to refine our ideas and plans. There were discussions with iwi, including with a lawyer involved in Maori research project reviews, who thought that as long as there was genuine engagement and partnership, and that the overall aim was to return the rivers back to their previous health, that iwi would likely be supportive of our efforts.

From all these discussions a plan was hatched.

We worked together on our first project plan, with the hope of getting some funding……