Jamaica imports most of its seafood despite warm water, seagrass meadows and sheltered coastlines. Jamrock Oysters is a 24-month pilot to establish the country’s first lantern-net oyster farm, capture twelve months of growth, mortality and water-quality data, and train at least six people from coastal fishing households as operators, half of them women. Two things make it new here: lantern nets replace intertidal racks, and traceability from spat to harvest is built in from day one, giving regulators and future exporters evidence that has never existed.
What made you want to be engaged in the fight against climate change?
I work in the fishing industry, and I hear the same thing everywhere: catches are smaller, the fish themselves are smaller, and fishers have to go further out into open sea to bring back less than before. Ecosystems are changing. At the same time I keep thinking about food security, rising temperatures and droughts, and how much less fresh produce I see around.
That pushed me toward aquaculture. I started looking at which species could be farmed responsibly, and I kept coming back to oysters. They filter water rather than pollute it, and they need almost nothing put in: no feed, no fertiliser, no fresh water. Fewer inputs seemed to me like a genuinely more sustainable supply chain.Seeing real‑world ecological degradation drove me to take action. As a young researcher, I hope to translate academic theories into practical, affordable restoration solutions. I believe youth can bridge science and on‑site management, protecting biodiversity and enhancing climate resilience for local communities.
What motivates/inspires you?
Right now what motivates me is producing for Jamaica. We are an island nation with a huge amount of coastline and an EEZ big enough to grow food in ways we have barely explored, and yet we import far too much of the seafood we eat. That gap bothers me every time I look at it.
I want to bring our seafood import bill down while putting a more sustainably produced protein in front of people. Diets here are shifting further toward ultra-processed food, and I think part of the answer is making good local protein available rather than lecturing people about what they eat. Being able to point at a farm in Jamaican water, say that came from here, and show exactly how it was grown, is what keeps me going.
What advice do you have for the youth that want to be involved with climate action?
Go and learn other skills. Climate action needs its fair share of lawyers, filmmakers, project managers, data analysts, operations managers and accountants. It needs all of it. The most useful things I bring to my own project came from working in data and commercial operations, not from environmental work. So do not feel that time spent in another industry is time lost, or that there is one narrow door you have to come in through (not everyone is going to be a marine biologist). Build your skills, then bring it over.
Which type of organisation would be most valuable for you to connect with during the event and why?
Universities and research centres, and other aquaculture farm operators.
The pilot site will start generating data quickly: growth, mortality, water quality, seagrass condition. My biggest open question is how to manage that data properly and how to use it to decide on scaling to other sites in Jamaica. Research institutions can tell me whether my monitoring design is sound before I commit to it, and they bring the rigour that makes results credible to regulators.
Farm operators are the other half. I want to talk to people who have run a site through a full production cycle in warm water, because the practical lessons are the ones no paper contains.