South Pacific III: Tongatapu to Vava’u

Ocean Science Communicator

Andrea Bozman was raised by the Ocean. She grew up on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, running along driftwood above the rocky intertidal. After studying fisheries and aquaculture at Vancouver Island University, Andrea moved to Bodø, Norway. At Nord University, she completed a PhD in Aquatic Bioscience, researching mesopelagic jellyfish under the midnight sun and northern lights. Living in the Arctic Circle deepened her appreciation for coastal environments and the extremes marine species face under a changing climate.

Andrea is compelled to share marine science with audiences outside the scientific sphere. She is an award-winning Ocean science communicator and creative writer working across genres including children’s literature, eco-poetry, nonfiction, and literary fiction. Her children’s book, Callie og vannveggen, is used as an Ocean literacy tool in 300+ early childhood education centres across Norway. She’s recognized by the EU4Ocean for bringing forward Ocean literacy in Europe.

Andrea will not stop learning. She is currently an MLitt Creative Writing student at the University of Glasgow focusing on climate fiction, ecopoetry, and hybrid essays that weave science stories into prose.

Andrea lives on the Norwegian coast with her family of four. She can often be found near saltwater seeking solace in the smell of phytoplankton and exploring the beach with her children.

Sustainability Consultant & Change Agent

Amanda Ayliffe lives in Cornwall, UK, where the sea and coastline are part of everyday life. After moving from London so her children could grow up surrounded by Cornwall’s remarkable natural environment, she became increasingly aware of the growing impact of plastic pollution on the marine environment she loves.

Inspired by an eXXpedition talk and Cornwall’s Planet C conference, Amanda returned to university to study Sustainable Business Management at the University of Exeter, graduating with Distinction. Her research explored how businesses can balance profit, people and planet, and she is now a co-author of research on B Corps and Triple Bottom Line organisations.

Drawing on a career in senior People and Culture roles leading organisational change, Amanda now works across Cornwall’s business and marine communities, coordinating the Fal and Helford Special Area of Conservation Advisory Group and supporting environmental initiatives within the local sailing community. Through her QuayThymes project, she also shares insights on sustainable sailing, research voyages and practical ways sailors can reduce their environmental impact.

A keen sailor, she races regularly as crew at Flushing Sailing Club and has sailed offshore with the Tall Ships Youth Trust. She is looking forward to the shared learning and challenge of life at sea, and to bringing the insights from eXXpedition back to coastal communities and businesses working to reduce plastic pollution.
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Artist/Designer

I’m Pallavi, a multidisciplinary artist, designer, entrepreneur and eXXpedition ambassador.

I’m the Founder of Inkwell Studios a multi-disciplinary creative studio with a focus on innovation and sustainability and The Gallivanters’ Colouring Club a globally-inspired art and culture club and circular economy, casual streetwear brand.

Having created numerous physical sets, costumes, puppets and models for film, theatre and animation, I became aware that most of the things I was making would end up in landfill after the production was over. With a long-standing passion for nature and the environment, I needed to find a new, low-waste way of working. Now I work to create imaginative and immersive art in the creative, innovative tech space as a virtual reality artist and video game producer.

My aim is to find solutions to reduce the negative environmental impact of the creative and entertainment industries.

IT Specialist for Sustainability at SAP

Rike’s connection to nature began in her childhood, spending long days around her family’s swimming pond in Germany – swimming, paddling, and observing the small ecosystems around her. Those calm moments outdoors sparked an early love for nature and a curiosity that continues to shape her life. As a beginner sailor, she joins this expedition with an open heart and a strong desire to learn, embracing both the adventure and the collaborative life onboard, eager to get her hands dirty along the way.

Her path into sustainability began unexpectedly in New York, where she spent several months hosting events for sustainability start‑ups at SAP. This experience opened her eyes to the scale and urgency of environmental challenges and ultimately inspired her to pursue a Master’s in Sustainability & Impact Management.
Professionally, Rike has spent the last seven years at SAP, helping companies measure and understand their sustainability performance through data and software. She believes technology can drive meaningful change, but also knows that data alone can feel abstract.

By joining this sailing crew, Rike hopes to reconnect the numbers she works with to the real‑world issues behind them. She wants to experience firsthand one of the biggest sustainability challenges of our time and contribute proactively to the research and the search for solutions.
Curious, open‑minded, and big‑hearted, Rike is excited to grow, learn, and deepen her purpose through this journey. Both as a person and as a sustainability professional.

CIO at Notpla

Karlijn grew up in the Netherlands, where some of her most treasured memories are of sailing on lakes and rivers with her family. That love for the natural world stayed with her, alongside a relentless curiosity for material systems and a deep belief that nature holds the answers to our biggest challenges.

With a background spanning design, science, and engineering, she’s always been drawn to overlooked natural materials, from growing architectural structures from salt to batteries from mining waste. Today, as CIO at Notpla, she leads a multidisciplinary team developing the next generation of natural packaging from seaweed and plants that disappear as quickly as a fruit peel. It’s work that is both urgent and hopeful, demonstrating that the sea itself might hold the answer to one of its greatest threats. Since winning the Earthshot Prize, Notpla has replaced over 30 million pieces of single-use plastic.

But fighting plastic from a lab and understanding what it actually does in the world are two different things. Karlijn is joining the eXXpedition because she wants to understand the problem more deeply – how the plastics end up in different places in the ocean, how it moves through ecosystems, and what it means for marine life, human health and the climate. She hopes the experience will sharpen the solutions she develops at Notpla and beyond, and fuel the advocacy and storytelling needed to inspire real change, alongside a community of inspiring women bringing their own expertise and passion to one of the most pressing challenges of our time.

For her, the expedition is where so many things that matter come together: her deep interest for scientific research, her love for the ocean and sailing, and her work at Notpla fighting single-use plastics every day.

Women's health and anthropology graduate

Naomi is a women’s health and anthropology graduate whose work sits at the intersection of environmental health, reproductive science, and gender equity.

She recently completed her MSc in Women’s Health in London, building expertise in conditions that disproportionately affect women, from endometriosis to postpartum mental health. She is currently interning at the United Nations Population Fund in Panama, working on sexual and reproductive health. She has also spent the past few years drawn to the ocean; learning to sail at Centro Velico Caprera in Sardinia, navigating the waters of Corsica and Italy, and watching whales surface in Mexico and Iceland.

Those encounters sharpened a question she had been living with for years. Her own unexplained symptoms, and a medical system with few answers, had already pointed her toward one conclusion: environmental factors are not peripheral to women’s health, they are central to it. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals in everyday plastics interfere directly with hormonal and reproductive health. Women bear a disproportionate burden, biologically and socially. Microplastics have been detected in ovarian follicular fluid, placentas, and breast milk. The ocean plastic crisis and the women’s health crisis are not two separate stories. They are the same story, unfolding inside our bodies.

Naomi joins eXXpedition to follow that story to its source — and make sure it reaches those who need to hear it most. As a writer for Sciences for Girls, a charity inspiring the next generation of girls in STEM, she will document the voyage through articles and educational content, bringing ocean science and women’s health to young audiences who rarely see themselves reflected in either field.”

Fundraising Manager & Sailor

My love of the sea started at a very young age, with pretty much every holiday spent either cruising around the south coast of the UK and France with my grandparents or out in my little oppie!

I have been greatly inspired by the women in my life – my grandma crossed the Atlantic on one of the early ARC rallies, and my mum raced as part of the first all‑female double‑handed team in both the RORC Transatlantic and the Caribbean 600.
Sailing has always been my place of calm and challenge. I’ve raced in teams and solo, and every time I’m on the water I’m reminded why I love it: the quiet moments, the problem‑solving, the humility of being so small next to the ocean.
I have dedicated my professional life to working in sustainable development, from supporting front line services during the Covid-19 pandemic to working in climate change and tackling air pollution, the biggest environmental threat to public health.

Joining eXXpedition feels like the natural next step — a way to bring together something that’s been part of me since I was young with the work and values that now guide me. I care deeply about how climate change affects people and places, and I’ve learned that stories and lived experiences are what actually move people to act. This trip is an opportunity to deepen my understanding, learn from others, and push myself into a new kind of sailing.

I want to come back with insights and human stories that help highlight the power of community‑led and Indigenous solutions. More than anything, I’m joining because I want to be part of something bigger than myself — a crew of women using science, storytelling and shared experience to protect the ocean that has shaped so much of my life.

Synthetic biologist and environmental ecologist

Erin is a synthetic biologist and environmental ecologist, whose research focuses on studying the impacts of plastic pollution on the environment, evaluating the impacts of plastic on human health, looking for microbes that have naturally evolved plastic degradation capabilities, and engineering microbes that can be used for plastic recycling/upcycling. Erin has conducted research on expeditions along the California coast, around the Cayman Islands, and in the Puerto Rico Trench, where she used the Alvin submersible to collect samples from the bottom of the ocean.

Erin is also a wet lab coach for a high school iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine) team whose past projects have focused on chrysene and PFAS remediation and plastic degradation in marine microbes.

Conservation Architect

Nicola spent much of her childhood messing around in boats or on the shore in Norfolk. She is a practicing conservation architect based in London.

She wishes to understand more about our environment at first hand, and share the stories and science.

She approaches the voyage with an open mind, willing and wanting to learn from the Ocean, eXXpedition team, crew and the people we will encounter on land.