Denise Lubinsky

I´m an oceanographer in love with the sea, especially with the marine mammals. After I finished my undergraduate studies at the University of Baja California in Ensenada I worked in a research project about bottlenose dolphins in Veracruz, Mexico (Gulf of Mexico). A few months later I came back to Ensenada to study my master’s in coastal oceanography, and for my thesis I had the opportunity to travel to 10 islands west off the Baja California peninsula studying with four pinniped species. I was fascinated with the islands and the field work and I completed my thesis about the distribution and abundance estimation of harbor seals. I presented my results as an oral presentation at the conference of the Mexican Marine Mammal Society in May 2010, and in Novembrer 2011 as a poster at the 20 Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals in Tampa, FL. At present a manuscript has been submitted for publication in a scientific journal and we are waiting for news.

When I finished my master’s degree I went to Veracruz again to work as a field coordinator in a manatee project. This gave me the opportunity to try to inspire and teach young students to fall in love with field work and marine mammals. In 2014 I enrolled in the Life Sciences PhD program at the Ensenada Scientific Research and Higher Education Center of Ensenada (CICESE) to continue with my master’s work, answering the questions that I could not answer before. During my first year I was invited by Dr. James Harvey from Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, Oregon, to take part in a harbor seal capturing campaign. The main objective was to learn different techniques to capture adult harbor seals and how to tag and handle them with care.

February 2016