Dr. Lei Lani Stelle, who leads studies of whales and dolphins off Southern California with students and Earthwatch volunteers, will be the speaker at the Oct. 29 meeting of the Monterey Bay Chapter of the American Cetacean Society. The program, free and open to the public, will start at 7:30 p.m. in The Boat Works building at Hopkins Marine Station, 120 Ocean View Boulevard, Pacific Grove.
Dr. Stelle is an associate professor of biology at the University of Redlands in San Bernardino County and an Earthwatch researcher. Her recent research has been focused on human impacts of marine mammals.
She incorporates citizen science into the research effort in order to expand the monitoring of distribution, behavior and physiology of local cetaceans and pinnipeds. Dr. Stelle also initiated and co-developed Whale mApp, a GIS-based web and mobile tool to encourage public reports of animal sightings. The GIS maps display the sightings and help model the habitat and determine human disturbances.
She has been working with marine mammals since she was an undergraduate in marine biology at UC Santa Cruz. She went on to earn her doctorate from UCLA, where she investigated the foraging ecology of gray whales.
