Staff Scientists
Kate Lomac-MacNair
Staff Scientist
Kate began working with Cetos in the start of 2008 by participating in the 2008 Maui field season. Kate works as both a data collector/processor and an underwater videographer in the field. Her passion for cetacean research started when she studying humpbacks in Costa Rica, while completing her BS in Environmental Science (Union Institute and University) with a focus in Cetacean Biology. She has continued in the field working as a naturalist on a whale watch vessels in both Juneau, Alaska, Bar Harbor, Maine and as a Marine Mammal Observer in Cook Inlet, Alaska. She has extensive non-profit and outdoor experience working with ASANA, rainforest conservation and marine protection organization, in Dominical, Costa Rica and guiding in the rainforest of Hacienda Baru National Wildlife Refuge. Kate currently lives between Anchorage, Alaska and her home in Dominical, Costa Rica. Currently in Alaska, she is working with CGGVeritas, a geophysical exploration organization, as a Marine Mammal Observer and Marine Biology consultant. She will spend the 2008 Arctic Open Water Season on an offshore vessel in the Chukchi sea working as an observer and will return for the next Cetos field season. In the meantime, Kate has been assisting on data analysis, paper writing, and other technical aspects of the Cetos research.
Paula A. Olson
Staff Scientist
Paula A. Olson has over 20 years of field experience studying whale and dolphin populations in the tropical and temperate regions of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans, as well as the polar seas of the Arctic and Antarctic. She has worked on multiple projects for international, national, and private research organizations. She has co-authored over 30 scientific papers. During the past 10 years Paula has spent a great deal of time at sea for the International Whaling Commission and the National Marine Fisheries Service collecting line-transect survey data on the abundance and distribution of cetaceans for population monitoring, management and conservation. Paula’s specific interest is the geographic movement and stock structure of cetacean populations using photo-identification as a primary research tool. Recently she and co-author Tim Gerrodette of the NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center published a catalog of photo-identified killer whales from the eastern tropical Pacific. Currently she is establishing a catalog of blue whales from the Antarctic for the International Whaling Commission. Additional research on blue whales investigates the identity of feeding aggregations in the Antarctic and the movement of blue whales in the southeastern Pacific. Paula is also a wildlife photographer with photographs published in many books and field guides about marine mammals. Paula holds a Master of Marine Affairs degree from the University of Rhode Island. Presently she is a visiting scientist at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, California. She has participated in Cetos research projects led by Dr. Tom Jefferson and in the future plans to lead projects of her own through Cetos on some of her research interest areas. When she’s not at sea you’ll find her hiking, camping, or running.
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Julie Hopkins
Staff Scientist
Julie Hopkins is one of the scientists based in our Cetos
Pacific Office in Washington. She has worked as an Animal
Biologist for 18 years in research, field, and clinical
work and resource management. Primarily a Threatened and
Endangered Species specialist, Julie has worked with terrestrial
wildlife as well as marine mammals. With several published
documents under her belt, she has amassed experience with
biological evaluation, environmental impact, management
of resources, and governmental regulation. During the past
10 years she has also operated a public education and outreach
organization, The Classroom Naturalist, with a focus on
basic science education and environmental education. She
spends her spare time with her husband and two daughters,
and runs a small horse farm. Julie has assisted on many
levels with Cetos for the last few years and her organizational
skills and calming influence keep the team flowing together
and moving forward towards our goals. Her work supports
our field efforts, as well as our data dissemination goals.
She works closely with the other Cetos Pacific based Cetos
folks on fundraising, Public Relations, and overall administration,
in addition to our supporting our ongoing scientific goals.
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Mariann Brown
Staff Scientist
Mariann Brown is one of the scientists based in our Cetos
Pacific Office in Washington. She has 28 years of experience
in the fields of resource and wildlife management, and
also in wetlands assessment. She has a bachelor's in wildlife
management and has performed post-graduate work in dolphin
communication. She specializes in wildlife management as
it relates to human-produced impacts and adds that skill
set to Cetos' goal of assessing disturbance to marine wildlife.
Mariann's additional technical specialties include natural
resource management, environmental planning, and wildlife-related
database management. Lately Mariann has been following
her lifelong dream of working with marine mammals, ever
since her graduate days in the 1980s with dolphins. She
started the Whatcom County, WA Marine Mammal Standing Network
in Coordination with National Marine Fisheries Service,
and is doing rehab work with a variety of animals including
marine mammals. She also has been conducting informal surveys
of marine mammals around the San Juan Islands off her boat
with her husband and leading wildlife tours of the area.
She hopes to become more involved in marine mammal research
as time goes on. Mariann's skills in conducting and supervising
field surveys, producing and assessing data, compiling
reports, and her recent work with marine mammal strandings
all support Cetos in our ongoing efforts to study marine
wildlife and contribute to the conservation of species.
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Dan Dendanto
Cetos Scientific Advisory Board
Dan Dendanto is on the Cetos Scientific Advisory Board.
He received his Masters Degree in Zoology in 1998 from
the University of Maine. He has studied genetics of finback
whales in the North Atlantic Ocean, and has done habitat
and foraging studies of baleen whales. His background includes
being a senior field scientist at Allied Whale and a research
associate of the College of the Atlantic. Dan has assisted
Cetos in previous years in the field in Kaua'i and Maui.
On other fronts, he is an expert at marine mammal skeletal
articulation as well as on the preparatory design of specimens
for museums and scientific collections.
Christine Feinholz
Staff GIS Analyst
Christine Loftus is our Geographic Information Systems
(GIS)/Remote Sensing analyst. Christine has worked on various
areas of geography including land-cover analysis, public
transportation, and most recently, in the marine environment.
She is especially keen about biological mapping of the
oceans, particularly marine mammals and the variables that
influence their distribution and abundance. Christine's
latest projects with Cetos involve mapping cetaceans encountered
from our vessel-based surveys in the Hawaiian islands (the
islands of Kaua'i, Ni'ihau and O'ahu). Through Cetos she
also provides GIS support to NMML for Dr. Brad Hanson's
research on killer whales. Her work is key to Cetos with
regards to presentation of our data findings, for example
most recently, presentations that we have given at the
Society of Marine Mammalogy meeting in San Diego (December
2005), as well as at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu
(Feb. 2006). She also recently completed analyses (plotting
sightings on tracklines and doing geographic projections)
for mapping killer whales for Dr. Hanson's killer whale
surveys in the Pacific Northwest. Christine currently lives
in Hawaii and enjoys spending time in the ocean surfing,
snorkeling, biking, and hiking.
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Pete Gehring
Graphics Manager
Pete Gehring has a B.A. in Zoology (1995) and a M.S. in Environmental Sciences (1998) from Miami University. He has over 10 years of experience collecting, analyzing, and presenting biologic data. Most of his work has focused on the mapping and study of coastal biologic resources, including marine mammal distributions along all U.S. coasts for the U.S. Navy; a comprehensive geo-database of natural resources for Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; an analysis of imposed protection on benthic habitats and fish populations off Vieques, Puerto Rico; and benthic habitat studies of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and Diego Garcia, British Indian Ocean Territory. Recently he contributed to "Marine Mammals of the World: A Comprehensive Guide to Their Identification" (Jefferson, et al; 2006) as the primary cartographer, mapping all species ranges for the book. Pete has worked on several of Cetos’s productions (poster presentations, reports, proposals), and has produced graphics and maps for us.
Elizabeth (Liz) Zele
Staff Acoustic Analyst
Liz Zele is a field biologist who works primarily with
marine mammals at sea. Her work is in the field of marine
bio-acoustics where she analyzes sounds used to study marine
mammals and their prey. Liz spends several months a year
at sea on large research vessels affiliated with government
and university sponsored projects. Liz works with Cetos
analyzing acoustic data that we have collected, sounds
from different marine mammal species from various projects.
Most recently her work involved analyzing calls of minke
whales around the Hawaiian Islands, and also analyzing
orca calls from the Pacific NW. Liz lives in San Diego
enjoys the beach and other outdoor activities.
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