Colin Barton holds a B.Sc. (Hons.) in Biology (Ecology) from the University of Aberdeen.
After graduating in 1992, he worked as a countryside ranger at a country park where he carried out wildfowl and wader (WEBS) counts, breeding and winter bird censuses (BTO) and vegetation surveys.
He started work with JNCC as a marine surveyor in 1993, gaining experience in marine surveys of seabirds and cetaceans, along with report writing and data analysis. He also participated in surveys of breeding seabirds, including a nationally important common gull colony.
He was a volunteer on the 1999 expedition to census breeding seabirds on St Kilda for Seabird 2000, and worked as a marine ecologist for an environmental consultancy in Aberdeen from 1998 to 1999, mostly in the offshore oil and gas sector, before travelling overseas with Claire in 2000 – 2001.