eNews
#01 2026
Meet SAEON’s new Research Assistant supporting South Africa’s contribution to the AAORIA
By Shandre Dreyer, Research assistant, Egagasini Node
Shandré Dreyer has been appointed as a Research Assistant at the South African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON) Egagasini Node and works under the guidance of Dr Lara Atkinson and Nicole du Plessis, supporting collaborative marine research focused on the generation and management of foundational seabed biodiversity data.
Shandré completed her Honours and Master’s degrees in Biodiversity and Conservation Biology at the University of the Western Cape. Her postgraduate research centred on marine nematodes from the West Coast of South Africa, with a focus on benthic community structures and species composition.
Shandré recently participated in the AAORIA Seabed Image Processing Workshop hosted by SAEON in Cape Town. The four-day workshop included participants from Namibia, Mauritania, Cabo Verde and South Africa with Prof. Kerry Howell from University of Plymouth sharing her expertise in the application of BIIGLE (https://biigle.de) for implementing a standardised seabed imagery analysis and biodiversity data generation. The broader aim of the workshop was to align efforts across African nations to enable seamless integration with regional and global projects being implemented through Challenger 150, a cooperative endorsed by the IOC-UNESCO as an Ocean Decade action (https://challenger150.world). The workshop was supported by a funding grant from the DSTI for International Oceanic Research Collaborations.
Shandré actively annotating samples from the west coast of South Africa.
Participants at the three-day AAORIA Seabed Image Processing Workshop hosted by SAEON in Cape Town in December 2025, where Prof. Kerry Howell (University of Plymouth) shared expertise on standardised seabed imagery analysis using BIIGLE.
Making up her primary tasks during her time with SAEON, Shandré will be focusing on processing and annotating seabed images collected during several recent expeditions using BIIGLE. The resulting datasets will contribute to AAORIA and the Ocean Decade actions and support SAEON’s mandate as a national environmental observatory to detect, understand, and predict environmental change through long-term, in situ monitoring. Additionally Shandré will participate in several Node activities including education outreach events and publishing data onto SAEON’s data portal.
