Biologists at Cascadia Research
John Calambokidis is a
Research Biologist and co-founder of Cascadia Research (in 1979). He has served
as the Principal Investigator of more than 40 research studies on marine
mammals, marine birds, and pollution. He has supervised a staff of up to 20
researchers. He recent projects include: coordinating a project to estimate the
abundance of humpback whales in the entire North Pacific Ocean using
photo-identification data, examining movements and estimating the abundance of
blue whales in the North Pacific, studying residency patterns of gray whales in
Washington waters, examining habitat preferences and abundance of harbor
porpoise and evaluating trends in contaminant levels of harbor seals. His
duties include writing research proposals, overseeing projects, conducting
field research, analyzing data, and publishing research results of projects
funded by government and private grants and contracts. He has co-authored over
30 papers in scientific journals and two books: the award-winning Guide to
Marine Mammals of Greater Puget Sound (Island Publishers, with R. Osborne
and E.M. Dorsey) and Blue Whales (Voyageur Press, with G.H. Steiger). He
is a charter member of the Society for Marine Mammalogy, as well as a number of
other scientific societies, and periodically teaches a Marine Mammal Biology
course as an Adjunct Faculty Member of The Evergreen State College in
Gretchen Steiger has been a
Research Biologist at Cascadia Research since 1983. She has conducted research
on a number of species in many regions from the
Kristin Rasmussen has been a
researcher with Cascadia Research since 1994. Her research has focused on
humpback whales, with an emphasis on their wintering distribution along
Lisa Schlender serves as both researcher and office manager of Cascadia Research, where she has worked since 1995. Her current duties include overseeing and managing photo-identification data of humpback, blue and gray whales; this includes processing, matching, data management and supervision of student interns. Lisa can be reached by e-mail at LSchlender (at) cascadiaresearch.org
Todd Chandler has been
conducting research with Cascadia since 1990. His focus has been on field
studies of marine mammals off
Annie Douglas has worked and collected data for
Cascadia Research since 1997. She has
helped in the ongoing collection of blue, humpback and gray whale
photo-identification from the Eastern Tropical Pacific to
Robin Baird is a
Research Biologist with Cascadia Research, joining in 2003. For many years his
research focused on marine mammals in British
Columbia. His current research focuses on: 1) biology and behavior of killer whales; 2) cetacean
diving (sub-surface) behavior; and 3) population
assessment of Hawaiian odontocetes. Current projects include studies of
diving behavior and food habits of killer whales in
Erin Falcone has been with Cascadia since July 2003. She began studying the social behavior and
population dynamics of humpback whales in the
Greg Falxa has been working off and on with Cascadia Research since its inception. He is a master electronics and radio technician and assisted with technical aspects of many Cascadia projects. His current research is focused on bat population surveys and studies of bat colonies in the Pacific Northwest using radio tracking, ultrasonic call analysis, and RADAR technologies. Some of the results of his bat work can be found at capitollake.com or email him at gregf (at) efn.org
Greg Schorr has been working with Cascadia Research since 2004,
involved in projects with killer whales in
Jessie Huggins is our stranding coordinator and has been with Cascadia since 2004. She takes the lead on coordinating and conducting Cascadia's responses to stranded marine mammals throughout Washington State and has been involved with field work and other various components of our long-term photo-ID projects. Jessie can be reached at jhuggins (at) cascadiaresearch.org