Qualifications:

M.Sc. in Marine Biology, Pondicherry University, Port Blair campus, 2022

B.Sc. In Zoology, Cotton University, 2020

Email: jessica.barman7@gmail.com

Profile:

Jessica’s obsession with marine creatures began when she was assigned to give a presentation on Aurelia aurita during her Bachelor’s degree. She fell so in love with these bizarre creatures that after diving deeper into the subject, she found that the ocean was filled with equally bizarre but incredibly magnificent creatures. Spending her entire life in the mountainous state of Assam, she was eager to experience coastal life, which brought her to Andaman Islands, where she completed her Master’s in Marine Biology from Pondicherry University. During her Masters, she worked on two dissertations; one was on analyzing the microplastic ingestion rates in seafood of Andaman, which was funded by Dr. E. G. Silas Small Grant, MBAI, and the other was on the biofouling rate in both natural and artificial substrata in Andaman waters. 

After her course completion, she learned SCUBA diving to witness the true beauty of the underwater world. She then joined a project in ICAR-CIARI which took her to the remote island of Car Nicobar, where she understood that if there is any place more beautiful than Andaman, it is Nicobar. With Dakshin, she is working on her seahorse project in Andaman, funded by The Rufford Foundation, where she will identify the habitats of seahorses through Local Ecological Knowledge and underwater surveys.