Upcoming Speakers
September 8, 2021 7PM (via Zoom)
Uko Gorter
About the Speaker
Born in Arnhem, Holland, Uko Gorter ended a seventeen-year career as a professional ballet dancer in 1997. Following in his father's footsteps, he subsequently pursued his lifelong dream of becoming an illustrator. Uko enrolled in the School of Visual Concepts and the School of Realist Art, both in Seattle, WA. His interest in nature led him to become a natural history illustrator. Specializing in marine mammal illustration, Uko Gorter has traveled extensively to observe whales, dolphins, and other marine mammals in their natural environment. Uko’s work has appeared in scientific journals, museums, interpretive signs, and many books. The culmination of this work was illustrating all marine mammal species for the second edition of “Marine Mammals of the World: A Comprehensive Guide to Their Identification”, authored by Thomas Jefferson, Marc Webber, and Robert Pitman (Elsevier Press, 2015). More recently his work was featured in the Anatomy of Dolphins; Insights into Body Structure and Function (Cozzi et al., 2017), and the Encyclopedia of Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises (Erich Hoyt. 2017).
Uko joined the American Cetacean Society in 2002, and is the current president of the American Cetacean Society. Uko lives with his wife in Kirkland, Washington.
About the Presentation
Dawn of Cetology: The Scientific Pursuit of Whales, from the Antiquities to the Twentieth Century
In 1787, the famous Scottish surgeon and anatomist, John Hunter, lamented that it was "...our unfitness to pursue our researches in the unfathomable waters" regarding our scientific inquiry of whales. From the ancient classical times through the early twentieth century, this challenge continued to plague naturalists and zoologists. How did we get to know the whales? The history of the science of whales, or
cetology, is immensely fascinating and richly layered. While it is impossible to fully detail this story in a single presentation, I will attempt to give a succinct overview and highlight some of the most important protagonists who shaped this unique branch of zoology. A field made up of philosophers, compilers, naturalists, ship-surgeons, systemizers, museum-curators, anatomists, acousticians, molecular biologists, ethologists, and many more. A science dominated by men until the twentieth century, when women made their entry after World War II.
I hope you will come away with a fuller appreciation of the history of cetology.
cetology, is immensely fascinating and richly layered. While it is impossible to fully detail this story in a single presentation, I will attempt to give a succinct overview and highlight some of the most important protagonists who shaped this unique branch of zoology. A field made up of philosophers, compilers, naturalists, ship-surgeons, systemizers, museum-curators, anatomists, acousticians, molecular biologists, ethologists, and many more. A science dominated by men until the twentieth century, when women made their entry after World War II.
I hope you will come away with a fuller appreciation of the history of cetology.
Watch this free presentation with us on Zoom!
October 13, 2021 7PM (via Zoom)
Geraldine Busquets-Vass
About the Presentation
About the Speaker
Geraldine Busquets-Vass was born in Mexico City. She is a Marine
Biologist with a Ph.D. in Marine Sciences. For the past fifteen years she has participated in marine mammal surveys from small boats, airplanes, and ships. Her research has focused on understanding the foraging ecology and reproductive physiology of marine megafauna via analysis of intrinsic biomarkers in animal tissues. During her Ph.D., she studied the foraging ecology, movement patterns, and physiology of blue whales using stable isotope analysis in skin and baleen plates. Currently she is a postdoctoral
researcher at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, at Dr. Seth D. Newsome Laboratory. The aim of her project is to characterize the foraging ecophysiology and migratory patterns of blue, gray, fin, and humpback whales in the eastern Pacific Ocean using bulk tissue and amino acid isotope analysis of baleen plates. The results of this research will enable us to assess the vulnerability of baleen whales to environmental change to help inform species-specific management plans.
researcher at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, at Dr. Seth D. Newsome Laboratory. The aim of her project is to characterize the foraging ecophysiology and migratory patterns of blue, gray, fin, and humpback whales in the eastern Pacific Ocean using bulk tissue and amino acid isotope analysis of baleen plates. The results of this research will enable us to assess the vulnerability of baleen whales to environmental change to help inform species-specific management plans.
"Feeding ecology, migratory patterns, and physiology of blue whales in
the northeast Pacific inferred using biomarkers in their tissues"
Blue whales are considered sentinels of the ocean’s health, because their populations are susceptible to changes in the marine ecosystems. They are fascinating to observe, and many populations sustain large whale watching companies. Because this group is both ecologically and economically important, it is necessary to continuously monitor their populations. However, this is not an easy task due to logistic limitations associated with their distribution and our inability to continuously observe them. To reveal many secrets of the foraging ecology and physiology of blue whales, researchers have been using “isotopic signatures” embedded in their tissues that provide information on their life histories at different time scales, depending on the tissue analyzed. Baleen is made of keratin, the same protein in our fingernails, and record isotopic signatures that provide information of the feeding ecology, migratory patterns, and physiology. In this presentation we will review how blue whale tissues are analyzed to track these preserved isotopic signatures to obtain information on the behavior and physiology.