Karlina Merkens

Graduate Student

kmerkens@ucsd.edu

Curriculum Vitae

Degrees:

       Ph.D. in Biological Oceanography, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at
       University of California San Diego, 2007 - present.

       B.A. in Biology from Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, 2004.

Research Interests:

       My research interests are centered on ecology and field research in general, and on large cetacean behavior, physiology and ecology in particular. A passion for understanding the natural world, specifically the ocean environment, has taken me to the Williams-Mystic Maritime Studies Program at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut, the Marine/Benthic Ecology Lab of Dr. Kenneth Heck at Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama, and on board Ocean Alliance’s R/V Odyssey in the Mediterranean and Canary Islands. As a first-year graduate student in the Biological Oceanography curricular group at SIO I am focusing my time on course work, but am beginning to work with data collected by the CalCOFI program. I will analyze cetacean-related data (sightings, acoustic detections, etc.) and general oceanographic data (SST, chlorophyll concentration, etc.) with the goal of creating ecological models of cetacean ecology in the California Current Ecosystem.