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Department: Research

Nina Rothe

Nina joined Pacific Whale Foundation in 2024. She completed a BSc in Applied Biology before obtaining her MSc in Marine Biology from Universidade do Algarve in Portugal. Her masters thesis focused on coral biomineralisation under different CO2 conditions. Before joining PWF, Nina conducted research on sea turtle and manta ray populations in the Maldives and … Continued

May Platt

May joined Pacific Whale Foundation in 2024. Growing up in Puerto López, a small fishing town surrounded by a protected area, May developed a deep passion for nature and its intricacies. She completed a Bachelor’s degree in 2020, majoring in Biology from Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja. As Research Assistant in Ecuador, May is responsible … Continued

Bárbara Galletti Vernazzani

Bárbara Galletti joined Pacific Whale Foundation in 2023 as a Research Associate, although her work in Chile has been financially supported by Pacific Whale Foundation since 2012. Her role is to produce scientific outputs and management actions in Chile in support of the Global Impact Plan. Barbara graduated from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile … Continued

Brian Stirling

Brian joined Pacific Whale Foundation in 2023. As a research technician based in Hawai’i, Brian is responsible for UAS (drone) field operations, data processing, and analysis. He has a MSc degree in Biology from California State University Long Beach (CSULB) and a BSc degree in Biology with Emphasis in Marine Biology from San Diego State … Continued

Grace Olson

Grace Olson is a research biologist based in Hawaiʻi and curates our dolphin photo-identification catalogs. Grace has substantial experience working with dolphin photo identification of both marine and freshwater cetaceans and during her studies she initiated identification catalogs for Amazon river dolphins in Brazil and Peru. Grace’s graduate research focused on sound patterns of social … Continued

Dr. Barry McGovern

Barry joined Pacific Whale Foundation Australia in 2021 as the Australian Research Associate where he manages the research team and leads the field operations to conduct research on the threats cetaceans face in East Australia. He completed his PhD research at the University of Queensland, in Brisbane, where he studied the acoustic behaviour of bottlenose … Continued

Dr. Shannon Barber-Meyer

Shannon joined Pacific Whale Foundation in 2022 as the Research Manager to conduct and manage cetacean research in Hawai’i and became Senior Research Manager in 2024, supervising the Hawai‘i research team as well as the International Program leads. She holds a PhD in wildlife conservation and completed a postdoctoral position studying emperor penguins in Antarctica. … Continued

Dr. Cristina Castro

Dr. Cristina Castro is an Ecuadorian researcher and principal investigator for our research studies in Ecuador. Dr. Castro has been leading PWF’s field studies on humpback whales in Machalilla National Park since 2001. Our Ecuador research started as a continuation of the population monitoring project that Dr. Castro implemented for her dissertation research and has … Continued