Tag Marine Biology

Katy Payne, bioacoustics pioneer

ID: Black and white photo of a smiling, middle aged, white woman with short hair, her arms out stretched. She’s wearing an over-sized white t-shirt, khaki pants and dark sandals. She stands on a flat surface (possibly a barge) on a smooth water way, surrounded by trees

Katy Payne does not have a doctorate or much in the way of papers with her name on them but her curiosity and early love of music lead to monumental breakthroughs in our understand of whale song and elephant communication. …

Professor Idelisa Bonnelly

Professor Bonnelly, an older woman with light brown skin and salt-n-pepper hair. She wears a white blazer, red blouse, a strand of pearls, and glasses. She is smiling at her desk, books and papers before her. Photographer unkown.

Often called the mother of marine conservation in the Caribbean, Professor Idelisa Bonnelly might be one of the most important women in Humpback whale research. Between getting her own marine biology degrees in the United States, because her home country…

Dr. Sylvia Earle

Dr. Sylvia Earle, a white woman with brown hair, stands inside a white, hard sided dive suite. Dials and tubes can be seen inside, near her head. Two men assist her from outside

Known by many as “Her Deepness”, Dr. Sylvia Earle is still championing the oceans at 89. Her list of accomplishments is long. Among them she holds the record for the deepest untethered dive in a JIM suit (one of the…

Dr. Joan Murrell Owens

Black and white photo of a Black woman with short, curly, dark hair seated at a microscope in a lab. She wears a floral blouse and a long sting of pearls. In her right hand she holds a button coral: a circle of white with faint striation radiating from the center

From a young age Dr. Owens had a deep love of the oceans. Her parents would take her and her two sisters fishing on the weekends and both encouraged their daughters to pursue higher education. Reading about both Jacques Cousteau…

Rachel Carson

Black and white photo of a white woman with short, wavy hair on a rocky beach. She holds a jar filled with water and rocks.

Last year my family and I had the opportunity to attend the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute‘s (MBAR) Open House in Moss Landing, CA. The event was set up beside their research boat The R/V Rachel Carson. I knew the…

Dr. Roger Arliner Young

This month’s Spotlight is one of the first women we know of in modern days to work in marine biology, Dr. Roger Arliner Young. Born in 1899 Dr. Young attended Howard University first as a music student and later taking…