Cher Chow

Research assistant (she/her)

Bio

I’m a marine ecologist from Hong Kong interested in understanding the functional impacts of biodiversity on ecosystems, with a focus on corals and fishes within reef ecosystems. Because I also have a background in the fine arts and graphic design, my research interests also involve combining imaging methods with statistical modelling to improve underwater surveying, such as estimating fish abundance and observing their feeding behaviours with adapted video deployments.

I joined the Biodiversity and Behaviour Lab as a masters student in Marine Ecosystem Management in 2019, where I investigated how the foraging impacts and trait diversity of reef fishes influenced coral recruitment patterns. Prior to beginning my MSc, I worked for two years as a research assistant/scientific diver with the State Key Laboratory of Marine Pollution in Hong Kong. There, I took part in several government consultancies on censusing reef fish diversity, benthic habitat mapping in marine parks, and coral community bleaching monitoring. I currently work on a part-time basis on researching novel biodiversity monitoring methods for EuropaBON (a EU Horizon 2020 biodiversity monitoring strategy development consortium) and as a database manager the BioTIME project.