Nan Hauser
Nan Hauser serves as the President and Director of the Center for
Cetacean Research and Conservation. She resides in the
Takuvaine Valley in the Cook Islands, South Pacific where she
conducts her whale research. Nan became involved in marine mammal
research, education, rescue and emergency care after working as a
registered nurse for both humans and animals for almost 3
decades.
In 1990 she became involved with the Whale Conservation
Institute's cetacean research expeditions aboard the R/V Odyssey
collecting scientific data on whales and dolphins around the world.
As Founder and Director of the New England Dolphin Outreach Project
she has taught on a global level for the Dolphin Research Center,
the Whale Conservation Institute and many other non-profit
organizations.
She has served on the Board of Directors for the Gulf of Maine
Aquarium, Chewonkie Environmental Foundation and the National
Marine Educators Association. As Production Researcher for dolphin
films on Discovery Channel and National Geographic, her work has
taken her worldwide
For the past 11 years she has also included the Bahamas as a
study sight for beaked whales, dolphins, sperm whales and a wide
variety of other species. This is where her team has significantly
filmed the Mesoplodon densirostris, a rare beaked whale, underwater
for the first time in history. She has taken thousands of
photographs of beaked whales, which have yielded unprecedented
behavioral information on these rarely observed and barely
understood animals.
Nan has initiated the study of an unknown population of Humpback
Whales in a remote corner of the Cook Islands, South Pacific,
including photo identification, bioacoustics, genetics, toxicology,
behavior, and underwater filming. Her team's work and footage have
contributed to films on marine mammals for the Discovery Channel,
National Geographic, Green Space Productions and Nature
Conservation Films. She is the Director of Cook Islands Whale
Research and was a key player in the creation of a 2 million square
kilometer whale sanctuary in the waters of the Cook Islands.
The South Pacific Whale Research Consortium is made up of a
group of whale researchers from Tahiti, Cook Islands, Tonga, New
Caledonia, New Zealand and Australia. The group compares their data
to find answers concerning migration, population identity and
genetic diversity, as well as preparing scientific papers for IWC
and scientific journals. Nan serves on the Executive Committee, as
a scientific contributor and as Secretary of the Consortium.
Nan is Co-founder and Director of The Cook Islands Whale
Education Center where she is has built exhibits and developed an
educational curriculum for the local people and visiting tourists
of the Cook Islands. Her philosophy is "Why learn it if you can't
share it?"
Nan is a Ph.D. candidate at Southern Cross University, Australia.
Claire Garrigue
Claire Garrigue is an honorary research fellow at the School of
Biological Sciences in Auckland University, Laboratory of Ecology
and Evolution, studying the genetic structure of the humpback whale
population of New Caledonia.
Claire has lived in the South Pacific since 1983. She has been
employed as a marine biologist at IRD (Institut pour la Recherche
et le Développement) since 1989. She was involved in different
programs studying the benthic ecosystem of coral areas, based in
Noumea (New Caledonia).
Founder and scientific advisor of Opération
Cétacés, an NGO that was created in 1994, Claire has developed
a research programme on marine mammals in New Caledonia. The main
focus is on humpback whales that winter in the lagoons of New
Caledonia, but other cetaceans are also studied. Every year she
manages a three-month field programme, coordinating a team of four
to five field assistants. Claire has represented New Caledonia at
the IWC in 2000 (Adelaide), and at the SPREP meeting in Apia 2001
(Samoa).
She has also been involved in marine mammals research in Hawaii
(January 1996) and in Canada (June 1993). Claire spends part of her
time creating projects on marine mammals to educate school children
and whale watchers about the conservation of marine mammals, and
has developed presentations and leaflets. She has written a book on
humpback whales in New Caledonia.
Claire has a PhD in Plant Biology and Physiology from the University of Montpellier, France.