July 7, 2021

Right whales are sometimes called "the urban whale" because of how close they come to shore to follow prey. It's partly why they were hunted to near extinction, and are severely threatened by ship strikes today.

In the northern hemisphere, right whales are so rare that every new death is a huge blow to the species' chances of recovery. The southern hemisphere species is doing much better. Here, a mother and calf hang near Cape Town while a passerby doesn't seem to notice them.

This photo was taken during my internship with Sea Search Research and Conservation. Getting a glimpse of a southern right whale was awesome, especially considering that their northern cousins may go extinct in our lifetimes.

I dive into some more detail about the plight of northern right whales in this article for The Canadian Encyclopedia.

May 18, 2021

Draw a Dolphin with Me, Part 2! Thanks to the Dolphin Communication Project for having me on their kids’ Dolphin Lessons series again. This time, we drew an orca (also known as a killer whale) together!

Hold up, why is there a dolphin lesson about killer whales? How can we tell if an orca is male or female? Answers to these questions and more at the video recording of this webinar.

If you’d rather not bother with drawing, there is also a colouring page version available on the DCP website.

December 15, 2020

Lucky to have capped the year off with Sea Search Research and Conservation, collecting humpback whale data near Cape Town, South Africa.

Humpback whales were hunted to near extinction in the 20th century but have recovered remarkably over the last few decades after becoming a protected species. Now, they’re returning to their ancestral feeding grounds on the Western Cape, where they form spectacular “super-groups” of up to 200 whales!

With the humpback population still recovering, these aggregations are still a new phenomenon. We know very little about their feeding strategies, or how the whales coordinate and communicate with each other. Moreover, shipping traffic is increasing in these waters, which pose major collision threats to these whales. Sea Search is using acoustic, behavioural and spatial mapping data to better understand the super-group phenomenon, and their findings will be crucial for figuring out how to coexist with these magnificent animals.

September 25, 2020

Presented some of my MSc work at my first annual American Fisheries Society conference, virtual edition! I tried making the most of the pre-recorded talks by going all in on an animated methods section, voiceover narration and a super high information density. I loved listening to the huge variety of presentation topics that were on offer this year, from invasive species to climate change to the social aspects of fisheries science.

I had a great time despite a lack of scheduled break with coffee and snacks. A huge plus was being able to hear from others who also wouldn’t have been able to make it to an in-person conference. I’m hoping a side effect of all this virtual business will be that future conferences will by default include a virtual attendance option to make content and discussions more accessible to a bigger portion of the scientific community.

September 15, 2020

Draw a dolphin with me!

With many of us learning from a distance this school year, the Dolphin Communication Project has been providing free live webinars about everything you would want to know about dolphins!

I joined them for their Dolphin Lessons series for school-age kids where I took some budding artists through the steps of how to draw a dolphin.

If you or someone you know would have liked to follow along, no worries - full recording available here.

September 4, 2020

I was photographed by the talented Alex Tran as part of his scientist portrait series titled Data Projections.

From Alex’s Instagram:

There’s a fleeting moment that sometimes occurs during a talk, when a speaker steps too close to the beam of light projecting their presentation and intercepts part of their visuals with their face. I’m recreating this moment in my latest series called Data Projections.

Here, the projection used is from my research into the neural mechanisms underpinning fear learning, which I’m exploring in the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata). This is a fluorescent image of a stained guppy brain section, with cell nucleoli shown in blue and recently active neurons shown in red.

August 15, 2020

Had the pleasure of spending the last couple of months working remotely with the Dolphin Communication Project on their ongoing dolphin social behaviour research. Those who know me personally are familiar with my unshakable passion for cetaceans, and I had a fantastic time diving into the nitty gritty of coding dolphin behaviours!

Here's a picture from 2019 when I visited one of their study sites, the Roatán Institute for Marine Sciences in Honduras, home to 17 bottlenose dolphins.

At RIMS, DCP is studying contact behaviour to learn about dolphin relationship quality in a way that can be compared to primates and corvids (e.g. ravens). These cross-species comparisons can help us better understand how complex social structures are formed and maintained. Read more about my reflections and experience as a remote intern in this month’s Dolphin Gazette.

January 25, 2020

Participated in my first American Fisheries Society excursion as a newly minted Science Communications Officer for the Quebec Student sub-unit! Pete of the Atlantic International Chapter took us out to Lake Memphrémagog on the Vermont-Quebec border for a day of ice fishing for perch and trout. I made a video recapping our trip that you can check out here.

December 19, 2019

Thank you to the Quebec Centre for Biodiversity Science for featuring my work at their symposium this week! I participated in their first annual scientist art exhibit with my pastel tiger and scratchbord orca, and my photo of an anhinga was a finalist in their photography contest this year. Had a wonderful time chatting with other students and researchers about the value of creativity and art in science.

October 15, 2019

I designed this poster for SQEBC’s 44th annual meeting happening at McGill this November! SQEBC is the Québec Society for the Biological Study of Behaviour, and our conference theme this year is Cognitive Ecology. Drawing on this, the SQEBC 2019 poster features a forest of pyramidal neurons, populated by some of the organisms studied by our lineup of plenary speakers.

August 20, 2019

My first first-author paper was published this month in the Journal of Experimental Biology! Logan and I showed that despite being less motivated to sing to videos of female birds than to live females, male zebra finches will always give a high-quality performance regardless of courtship context. This brings into question previously-held assumptions about the relationship between neural circuits underlying motivation and performance. Check out the full paper here.

August 5, 2019

My awesome supervisor Jon Sakata was a special guest on NPR’s Science Friday recently! Hear him talk about how songbirds learn to sing, and what they can teach us about ourselves. Featuring some photos by yours truly :).