BSc (Hons)- Marine and Environmental Biology – University of St. Andrews, UK

MSc  - Biodiversity, Wildlife and Ecosystem Health  - University of Edinburgh, UK

PhD – Marine Biology – University of St Andrews, UK

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Originally from the UK, Claire has been in Hawia’I since 2021, where she works as a marine mammal researcher with the University of Hawai’I, primarily working on spinner dolphins. She has been working with marine megafauna for more than 20 years, including some projects with basking sharks back in Europe.  The basking shark love expanded to include whale sharks when she came across them the for the first time when carrying out survey work for spinner dolphins in Kona.

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Prior to moving to MMRP, Claire was project coordinator for SCANS-III, a large, international survey for cetaceans covering much of the European Atlantic Region. Her PhD work used the data collected during this and other large-scale surveys to run ecological models to investigate the factors that influence large scale distribution of cetaceans.  Previous work has involved considerable time in the field throughout the Atlantic, as well as the Southern Ocean and in Hong Kong.

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She has very interested in the effects of human impacts on marine wildlife and holds the UK accreditation of Chartered Environmentalist. She is Convenor of the Chartered Institute for Ecology and Environmental Management’s (CIEEM) Marine and Coastal Special Interest Group, an active science communicator, keen science writer, and member of the USA Blue Schools initiative.

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