Biography

Andrea (Coombs) Wallace received her BSc (Honours) from Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, in 1994, studying Environmental and Resource Science. After several years of working for an environmental consulting company as well as marine mammal research groups, she returned to academia for graduate studies.

Andrea completed her MSc in April 2004 at the Marine Mammal Research Unit/Fisheries Centre in association with UBC’s Resource Management and Environmental Studies (RMES) department. The focus of her research and thesis, “Marine Mammals and Human Health in the Eastern Bering Sea: Using an Ecosystem-based Food Web Model to Track PCBs", was tracking PCBs through the eastern Bering Sea ecosystem to identify the pathways of contaminant flow and evaluating the health implications of contaminant exposure for marine mammals and humans. This work extends existing models of the eastern Bering Sea ecosystem and is important in terms of informing management strategies for marine mammals and human health.

Post-MSc, Andrea worked as a Researcher with Dr. Andrew Trites at the Marine Mammal Research Unit investigating Steller sea lion behaviour and diet. Andrea then worked on a number of projects in Uganda including research on primate crop-raiding behaviour and the development of ways to mitigate human-wildlife conflict, documenting the resource use and food consumption of subsistence farmers, and the behaviour of a community of chimpanzees inhabiting degraded and fragmented forest.

Andrea is currently a PhD student at Imperial College London, United Kingdom. Her research focus is on the sustainability of an artisanal freshwater fishery in Madagascar. For more information on her work and the Imperial College Conservation Science (ICCS) research group, please visit http://www.iccs.org.uk/.