About us
Pisces Environmental Services (Pty) Ltd was established in January 1998 to help fill the growing need for an expert interface between users of the coastal and marine environment and the various national and provincial management authorities.
Since then, PISCES has been providing a wide range of information, analyses, environmental assessments, advice and management recommendations to these user groups, particularly the South African and Namibian marine diamond mining and hydrocarbon industries.
THE TEAM
As founder and director of Pisces since 1998, Dr Andrea Pulfrich has over 25 years’ experience as a marine ecological researcher and consultant. After completing her MSc at the University of Cape Town, she obtained her doctorate at the Institute for Marine Science at the Christian-Albrechts University of Kiel, Germany, returning to South Africa as a contract researcher at the University of Cape Town.
Her expertise includes undertaking marine ecological specialist studies, marine environmental impact assessments, and baseline and monitoring surveys relating to marine and coastal mining and dredging, hydrocarbon exploration, thermal/hypersaline and waste water effluents, mariculture and subsea pipelines and telecommunications cables. Having been an active field researcher in Europe and Australia, her work now focusses on the coastal, intertidal and shallow subtidal marine environments in South Africa, Namibia and Mozambique. Andrea is a member of the South African Council for Natural Scientific Professions and the International Association of Impact Assessment (South Africa).
In addition to the work done with Pisces Environmental Services, Dr Pulfrich has established a respected reputation for project management and field surveys in previous positions of employment, particularly in the following capacities:
- Design and implementation of a five-year sampling program to determine population dynamics and small-scale recruitment patterns of mussels and cockles in the Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea (Germany);
- Experimental design and implementation of dive surveys for stock assessments of giant periwinkles on the Cape south coast, including collaboration with fishermen;
- Experimental design and implementation of dive surveys to investigate and monitor the impact of diamond mining on the marine environment and fisheries resources, including collaboration with fishermen and diamond divers.
