About

Andy Read

Andy is the Stephen Toth Professor of Marine Biology and the Director of the Duke University Marine Laboratory, in Beaufort, NC, USA.  He was born in Southampton, England and educated in Canada. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Guelph in 1990 for research conducted on the life history and bycatch of harbour porpoises in the Bay of Fundy, working under the supervision of Dr. David Gaskin. He has conducted field research on marine mammals, sea birds and sea turtles in North and South America, Europe, Asia and the Antarctic. You can access his papers through Google Scholar.

Andy is active in the conservation of marine vertebrates at the national and international levels.  He has acted as a member of the Cetacean Specialist Group of the IUCN, the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission, the International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita and several federal marine mammal Take Reduction Teams.  He has also served on the Editorial Boards of Marine Mammal Science, the Journal of Cetacean Research and Management and Endangered Species Research. In 2015, Andy was nominated by President Obama to serve as chairman of the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission, which provides oversight for marine mammal policies and programs being carried out by federal regulatory agencies. And from 2008-2010 he served as President of the Society for Marine Mammalogy.

Andy lives with his wife Kim in an old farm house in Gloucester, NC, with an assortment of horses, cats and chickens, a big organic garden, and a fruit and pecan orchard.  His dreams of one day operating a commercial organic farm have been tempered by his complete lack of competence with heavy equipment and machinery of any kind.

Research Staff

Heather Foley

I’m interested in several aspects of marine conservation, but most particularly the habitat use and populations dynamics of cetaceans, and applying spatial analyses in our research.  After growing up in Minnesota and studying at Boston University, I held a variety of seasonal field jobs researching right whales in their critical habitats before working for Duke.

At Duke, I am involved in a variety of projects as a research technician here, which fortunately means a lot of field work.  I help conduct vessel surveys offshore along the southeastern seaboard for the US Navy.  Our goal is to provide the Navy with baseline data on marine mammal and sea turtle behavior, density and abundance estimates in these areas.  We accomplish this though a variety of methods, including photo-identification, satellite tagging, passive acoustic monitoring, and biopsy sampling.  I also assist in other field projects at the lab, including coastal surveys and help with data management. I hold a Master of Science from North Carolina State University in Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology.

Zach Swaim

I earned a B.Sc. and M.Sc. degree in marine biology from the University of North Carolina Wilmington where I studied lipid metabolic dynamics in North Atlantic right whales.  I’ve spent many summers in the Bay of Fundy working on a number of field based research projects, ranging from seabird and shark foraging ecology to right whale photo-identification and habitat use studies.  I’ve also worked in the Southeast United States right whale calving grounds as a research observer helping to reduce ship collisions with right whales.

Currently, I’m working on several projects in the lab but I am primarily responsible for conducting marine mammal and sea turtle surveys in the proposed Navy Undersea Warfare Training Ranges (USWTR) in Onslow Bay and off Jacksonville, FL.  The aim of this project is to provide the Navy with baseline data on the occurrence, density and residency patterns of marine mammals and sea turtles in the USWTR.

Kim Urian

I received an undergraduate degree from the University of Colorado and then worked as a research assistant at the University of California at Santa Cruz with Dr. Ken Norris and Dr. Randy Wells.  I also managed the database from the long-term study of bottlenose dolphins in Sarasota, Florida with Randy Wells.  I received a Masters degree from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, for work with Drs. Laela Sayigh and Randy Wells  on the community structure of bottlenose dolphins in Tampa Bay, Florida. I am currently employed as a Research Analyst at Duke, where I supervise the photo-identification programs for several species of odontocete.  I am also the curator of the Mid-Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphin Catalog.

Danielle Waples

I am interested in the behavioral ecology of marine mammals, especially  foraging ecology, habitat use, and fisheries interactions. I received my Master’s in Marine Sciences from the University of California at Santa Cruz and studied seasonal differences in activity budgets of bottlenose dolphins in Sarasota, Florida.

My fieldwork at Duke consists of photo-identifying bottlenose dolphins, collecting data on dolphin and whale activity, and trawling for fish and invertebrates.

I have participated in a number of interesting projects, several of them focusing on the interactions between marine animals and commercial fisheries. Previously, we completed a study that used an overhead video system to look at how dolphins behave around gillnets in order to understand why dolphins sometimes become entangled in this gear.

Dr. Nicola Quick

I received my undergraduate degree in Marine Biology from the University of Wales, Swansea and my Master’s degree in Marine and Fisheries Science from the University of Aberdeen. I completed my Ph.D on vocal behaviour of bottlenose dolphins in the Lab of Dr Vincent Janik at the University of St Andrews Scotland. I have worked as a government scientist for the Fisheries Research Services in Scotland; as a Principal Scientist for SMRU consulting, part of the University of St Andrews; and as a researcher for many academic projects. I remain an honorary Research Fellow at the Scottish Oceans Institute at the University of St Andrews.

At Duke I have been employed as a Postdoctoral Associate and more recently a Research Scientist in the Read Lab. My research has focused on functional aspects of vocal behaviour in small odontocetes. I have also worked on a range of projects assessing behavioural reactions of marine mammals to man-made sound. These projects have looked at aspects of vocal and movement behaviour using on animal tags. I am fortunate to be involved in a range of international collaborative projects in the US, Scotland and the Bahamas.