Elisabeth Støhle Rødland 23 years, from Ålesund, Norway. Studying for a master degree in marine biology at the University of Oslo
My master thesis is about population estimation of the sperm whales off Andenes. I want to find out how many sperm whales visit the Bleik Canyon during the summer months and how many of these come back for several years. To find this out I need to go out and take pictures of the whales, and this is what I do here at Andenes Whalesafari. Together with the others in the research team we go out on the Whalsafari trips every day and take pictures of the tail fluke of the sperm whales as the lift them up when diving. These pictures we can then use to identify the individuals by markings on the fluke. When I know how many sperm whales we have seen, I can use statistics to quantify how many sperm whales there should be in total in the area.
Lara Polo
26 years, from Genova, Italy
Lara
Polo comes from Italy and she graduated at the University of
Genoa
in the Marine Environmental Science. Her master thesis
examined the association
of Risso’s dolphin in the North Western Mediterranean Sea.
Since 2006 she has
taken part in the monitoring surveys conducted in the
International Cetacean
Sanctuary (Pelagos) area. She has extensive experience in
cetacean photo
identification and currently is working in the Ishmael
Project which has the
aim of defining the critical habitat of sperm whale in the
Pelagos area.
Luca Tassara
23 years, from Genoa,
Italy.
For his
bachelor degree thesis he monitored cetacean
presence from ferries in the Ligurian Sea. He is also
participating to the
surveys for the Ishmael project on sperm whale in the
Pelagos Sanctuary.
He loves
to play sports like water polo and box. He is a good book reader,
especially science
fiction (Asimov, Simmons...) and fantasy tales (Tolkien,
Martins..). One of his
passions is music, and he considers himself a metal
addicted! A
lot of people told him that Norway is a marvellous place to
be, so he is really
eager to explore it!
Marta Acosta Plata
25 years, from Madrid,
Spain.
Universidad
Rey Juan Carlos (Spain)
Environmental
Science
degree.
Msc in Science and
Environmental technology.
Environmental
Engineering student and PhD candidate.
Marta
has been involved in cetacean research since 2007 becoming part of
several
research teams as a volunteer in Greece, Norway and Spain. These
collaborations
allowed her to participate in the research group that first found alive
individuals matching from catalogues in Norway and Azores islands,
confirming
one of the suspected migration routes in the North Atlantic.
Now
she´s working for Whale Safari Andenes as a member of the photo ID
research
team. The aim of her project is to study the social structure existing
among
sperm whale males and the migratory behaviour. Using the photo
identification
techniques she will compare the database among years searching for
preferred
companionship among individuals. Sharing the catalogue with other
research
groups may allow to find some more individuals matching in different
parts of
the world.
