CONFERENCE COMMITTEE

I’ve spent the past twenty plus years using marine mammals as bioindicators of ocean production and contamination. Marine mammals occupy low to high trophic levels and every major water body on the planet. They are the ultimate integrator and reflector of these environments. By utilizing various body tissues with different turnover rates, we are overlaying a timeline of trophic dynamics and contaminant exposure.

Over the past 25 years I have studied the physiological adaptations and environmental interactions of pinnipeds and cetaceans inhabiting polar regions. Currently, with colleagues and graduate students, my research has focused on reconstructing longitudinal datasets in baleen whales to better understand human impacts.

Chronology of Ocean Life group is the collaborative effort lead by Drs. Usenko and Trumble, with expertise in marine mammal physiology, biochemistry, analytical and environmental chemistry. The CoOL group focuses on assessing stress and stressors in baleen whales using baleen and earplugs. This comprehensive analytical approach is built upon matrices that record and archive both time (i.e. age and date) as well as unique chemical or elemental tracers. This allows the temporal reconstruction of analytes up to a life-span of individual baleen whales, both as a physiological response to intrinsic and extrinsic stressors as well as an indicator of environmental change.