Andrew Ross
Benthic Monitoring
Bio
Andrew is a PhD candidate with the University of the West Indies, Mona, and has for 7-years been propagating endangered corals in nursery systems designed in and for the ecological, physical and economic conditions of northern Jamaica. This nursery showed high survivorship and provided full access to the growing samples, so was able to show in detail differences between nursery locations and coral lineages (genets) in fouling and bleaching susceptibility and branching and growth rates; vital considerations in restoration of high-value corals and coral ecosystems in a changeable world.
This academic work segued into a private business in 2008, generating high-coral, low-impact snorkeling gardens for resorts. They have since developed the system’s scalability to enhancement of fisheries, coastal hydrology and beach sand accretion, thus scales realistic to restoration and analogous to reforestation.
Andrew grew up in the dry, high valleys of south central British Columbia, Canada, with a “healthy” interest in grasshoppers, frogs, snakes, dip-netted beasties and my aquarium. Watching Jacques Cousteau films and tide-pooling with his uncle, Prof. Donald Ross, at the Bamfield Research Station on the Pacific Coast and with family in Nova Scotia exposed him to the ocean and its fantastic diversity of things monstrous and fabulous. Andrew has sampled fish and forests across central Canada, assessed and restored riparian habitats in Georgia (USA) and was a forester and taught SCUBA in Australia before coming to work for the Montego Bay Marine Park as Science from 2002 through 2005, where he still volunteers and advises.
