Andy Read
Andy is the Stephen Toth Distinguished 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 2022, Andy was nominated by President Biden to serve as a Commissioner of the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission, which provides oversight for marine mammal policies and programs being carried out by federal regulatory agencies. His nomination was confirmed by the Senate and he began his term as Commissioner in 2023. And from 2008-2010 he served as President of the Society for Marine Mammalogy.
Andy lives with his wife Kim on a century-old farm 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
Ally Kristan
Ally is broadly interested in the conservation and protection of marine wildlife in relation to anthropogenic impacts, namely climate change, pollution, and disturbance such as noise. Her academic research has focused on Antarctic penguin and seal ecology. Born and raised in Raleigh, Ally obtained a B.S. with Honors in Marine Biology from UNC Wilmington and an M.S. in Oceanography & Coastal Sciences from Louisiana State University. Her work has brought her from a sea turtle hospital in North Carolina to a whale watch boat in Maui to the Florida Gulf Coast islands brimming with nesting seabirds. As a NOAA Knauss Fellow in Washington, D.C. from 2022-2023, she worked with the National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of Polar Programs on international Antarctic environmental policy.
At Duke, Ally works as a Research Associate and Lab Manager for the Read Lab.
Zach Swaim
Zach grew up in the foothills of North Carolina before moving to the coast and earning a B.S. and M.S. in marine biology from UNC Wilmington. During graduate school, he spent many summers in the Bay of Fundy working on field-based research projects, ranging from seabird and shark foraging ecology to right whale lipid metabolic dynamics and habitat use studies. His first real job out of school was flying aerial surveys in the southeast US right whale calving grounds. He took a short hiatus to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail before coming to the Duke Marine Lab in 2011.
Zach has over 15 years of experience as a field biologist studying wild populations of marine mammals from humpback whales in Antarctica, the vaquita in the Gulf of California, and North Atlantic right whales and goose-beaked whales along the US east coast. He is a licensed vessel captain and field team coordinator for several ongoing US Navy-supported projects, including the Atlantic Behavioral Response Study, North Atlantic right whale monitoring and tracking, a behavioral response of humpback whales to vessel traffic, and cetacean monitoring and tagging on the Jacksonville Shallow Water Training Range.
At DUML, Zach provides hands-on training in marine mammal field techniques to undergraduate and graduate students that focus on vessel operation, data collection, photo-ID, biopsy sampling, tracking, and tagging.
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 odontocetes. 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 an undergraduate degree from Stanford and my Master’s in Marine Sciences from the University of California at Santa Cruz where I studied seasonal differences in activity budgets of bottlenose dolphins in Sarasota, Florida.
At Duke I am responsible for maintaining our long-term photo-identification catalogs of bottlenose dolphins, short-finned pilot whales, and goose-beaked whales.