Simone Baumann is a graduate student in the department of animal physiology at the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Germany, working on her doctorate project in cooperation with our lab. She is interested in the echolocation behaviour of odontocetes and has previously worked on echolocation of bats. Her research focuses on acoustic species discrimination and acoustic long-term monitoring of odontocetes around Palmyra Atoll, a remote island in the Northern Line Islands chain. She applies knowledge gained during visual and acoustic surveys to passive acoustic recordings and draws conclusions about dial or annual cycles and habitat use.

Elizabeth Henderson is a graduate student in the Biological Oceanography department at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She is investigating delphinid vocalizations as they relate to behavior and habitat use patterns in the Southern California Bight. She is also interested in the impact on behavior from both natural and manmade causes such as short- and long-term temperature fluctuations, movement of prey, and ship noise.

Megan McKenna is a third year Biological Oceanography graduate student at UCSD, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO). She is also an Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) fellow and part of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation (CMBC) at SIO. Megan’s current research explores the biological and social questions surrounding a noisier ocean. Her research is focused in coastal California (Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary (CINMS)), where she is investigating (in collaboration with CINMS) how noise from commercial ships is changing the local ecosystem.

Karlina Merkens is a graduate student in the Biological Oceanography curricular group at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She is examining trends in cetacean sightings and acoustic detections (primarily of sperm whales) in the California Current Ecosystem, and correlating these trends with oceanographic data collected as part of the CalCOFI program.

Marlene Brito is a graduate student in the Biological Oceanography curricular group at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Beyond her current coursework, she hopes to utilize the whale acoustics lab’s extensive database to explore how whale communication, acoustic behavior and ecology are affected by noise (especially that from anthropogenic sources). On the ecology side, she’s interested in relating behavioral consequences of a noisier ocean to the recovery patterns of overexploited marine mammal populations, including susceptibility to Allee effects (i.e. inverse density dependence at low population size or density).

Martin Gassmann is a PhD student in Applied Ocean Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and at the Department of Electrical Engineering at University of California, San Diego. Having a broad background in electrical engineering, Martin is interested in exploring all kinds of technical aspects of marine mammal sounds, like the Bio-Sonar of marine mammals, for potential engineering applications. This involves a strong interest in the fields of Underwater Acoustics and Signal Processing. In addition, his electrical engineering skills enable him to develop new and improve existing passive acoustic methods to enhance the studies of marine mammals.

Kait Frasier is a first year graduate student in the Biological Oceanography department at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In addition to beginning her coursework, she is currently using arrays of seafloor instruments to localize and track dolphins in the Channel Islands. Kait is interested in using this technique to study behavioral responses of cetaceans to anthropogenic stimuli.