He earned his Bachelor and Master degrees in Biology and Microbiology from the University of New Brunswick in Canada and his Doctorate degree from Central Queensland University in Australia, where he studied the effects of global warming and climate change on coral reefs. He has done Post-doctorate fellowships at the University of Connecticut, where he studied phytoplankton dynamics in Long Island Sound, and at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, where he studied genetics and deep-sea organisms. From 2005 to 2012, he was working at Texas A&M University, where his focus was marine microbiology with a specialty in climate science and coral reef ecosystems. In 2012, he moved to a research position at the Annis Water Resources Institute (AWRI), where he currently resides.