Oceans of noise - Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society

René SwiftRené is a research assistant at the University of Aberdeen’s Lighthouse Field Station, where he isstudying the distribution, behaviour and acoustic environment of large whales in the Faroe ShetlandChannel. Before joining the University of Aberdeen, René worked for the International Fund forAnimal Welfare’s Song of the Whale Research Team and the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust.René has been involved in passive acoustic monitoring / mitigation of seismic surveys and hismaster’s thesis looked at the impact of seismic surveys on sperm whale distribution and behaviour.Lindy WeilgartLindy first became involved in undersea noise issues in 1993, when she raised concerns regarding theATOC project. She has since written articles, attended workshops and conferences, reviewed severalenvironmental impact statements and other documents, and given numerous lectures on this topic. Shehas been studying whale sounds since 1982. She received her M.Sc. (Memorial University ofNewfoundland) studying pilot whale vocalisations and behaviour, and her Ph.D. (DalhousieUniversity) researching sperm whale acoustic communication. An NSERC post-doctoral fellowship(Cornell University) allowed her to study the dialects of sperm whales in the South Pacific. She iscurrently an assistant professor and honorary research associate at the Biology Department, DalhousieUniversity, Halifax, Nova Scotia.5