Profile
Ayana is a fifth year marine biology PhD candidate, NSF Graduate Research Fellow and Switzer Environmental Fellow at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, where she is advised by Dr. Jeremy Jackson. She is interested the science, economics, and policy of marine resource management, and is an interdisciplinary student and NSF IGERT fellow in the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation. Ayana's research is focused on sustainable management of coral reef fisheries, and she conducts her fieldwork on the Caribbean island of Curaçao. In summer 2008, she completed an ecological and economic assessment of the island's trap fishery, and found a way to reduce fish trap bycatch by 80% using escape gaps. In autumn 2009, she returned to Curaçao to examine the gill net fishery and conduct a socioeconomic survey of the island's fishermen and professional SCUBA divers. Her work aims to produce a gear-based approach to sustainable fisheries management that incorporates stakeholder views and can serve as a blueprint for any coral reef location in need of straightforward fisheries management strategies. Prior to enrolling at Scripps, Ayana was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, by an Irish-American high school English teacher/ environmentalist and a Jamaican architect/potter. After receiving a bachelor's degree in Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard University, she studied ocean zoning theory as a research fellow at the Marine Policy Center of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Subsequently, she spent two years as a policy analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Washington, D.C. developing and analyzing marine regulations and policies for their environmental, economic, and health impacts. After finishing her PhD, she hopes return to environmental policy work where she can put both her natural and social science backgrounds to use.
