Life on the Edge: Uncut Scenes 3 of 8
Beluga field camp, Chukotka, Russia
Land of the midnight sun. To go the farthest east, you must go west. In this era of a warming Arctic there was a brief period when relations between the US and our neighbor to the west had also warmed to where we were among the first western scientists to work in Russia’s Far East. In a successful international diplomatic effort, lead in large part by Indigenous peoples on both sides of the Bering Strait, were invited to work with Russian colleagues to satellite tag and sample beluga whales for genetic studies. In our first year, we flew west in a small plane across the International Date Line. In a subsequent trip we flew east almost around the entire globe. My advice: fly west!
About Greg -
Before coming to FAU’s Harbor Branch, Greg earned both his bachelor’s degree and his doctorate degree from University College Dublin in Ireland, researching badgers, a small mammal related to weasels, minks and otters. So, how did he end up in Florida researching whales thousands of miles away? Once Greg graduated with his doctorate degree, he moved to California in search of jobs. After facing several rejections, one person at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in San Diego said he had a small project on belugas no one was working on. He was shocked at such a unique opportunity to work with marine mammals. “I pounced on that,” he says. “And the rest, as they say, is history.”