Biography

Andy was born in Cardiff in 1962 and spent every school holiday in his family caravan in Pennard on Gower, near Swansea. Every spare moment was spent foraging in the superb rockpools exposed at low tide in the Limestone reef for crabs and prawns and then snorkelling when the tide was in. This laid the foundation for his love of the marine environment which continues unabated today.

He read geology at Swansea University and then went to University College London to study for an MSc in Marine Geology & Geophysics. A brief period in the oil industry in London and Oman was enough to convince him to change career. In 1989, he went to Cardiff University where he completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Environmental Land Management. At this time, he started writing a walker’s interpretation guide to the Brecon Beacons with his friend, Professor David Whittaker.

Andy was employed by the Countryside Council for Wales in Cardiff to write management plans for Gower Coast National Nature Reserve and Whiteford Burrows NNR. He then went to write a book on the coastal and marine environment on a Worldwide Fund for Nature funded post at the Marine Conservation Society. He became self-employed in 1991 with spells as a lecturer at Bournemouth and Cardiff Universities. He wrote the management plan for a representative habitat reserve on the Belize Barrier Reef.

He now combines his love of teaching and photography in a series of workshops in West Wales with working in marine nature conservation as part of the Marine Conservation Society’s Coral Team where he has been involved in the creation and management of the Tun Sakaran Marine Park in Sabah, Borneo.

Andy wrote and photographed "Coastline Wales" in 2008 and, together with colleague Dave Whittaker, produced a new edition of “Walking on the Brecon Beacons” in 2009. Andy worked with Jamie Owen in 2009, providing the photographs for his new book “Around Wales by B-roads and Byways”. He has also written "Walking on Gower" which was published in 2012 and regularly writes articles on photography and the countryside for a variety of magazines.