~ Dr. Bernard Brennan ~

Dr. Bernard Brennan received his undergraduate training at Cornell University, where he took a degree in history after writing an honors thesis on the colonial whaling industry on Nantucket. Acting on his obvious interest in the sea, and particularly in the whales, Bernard joined the Whale Conservation Institute (WCI) in 1992. Aboard WCI's research vessel Odyssey, he spent eighteen months in the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, studying the behavior, ecology and population structure of sperm whales and other cetaceans around the archipelago. The following year he and his future wife led a similar three-month expedition to Costa Rica.

Since 1996, Bernard has worked with Cornell's Bioacoustics Research Program on various projects, including tracking migrating birds at night using their calls, and conducting playback experiments with migrating Gray whales off California. He is particularly interested in sperm whale foraging ecology and acoustics. As a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow, Bernard is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at Cornell University, in the department of Neurobiology & Behavior, under Dr. Chris Clark. He will be conducting the passive sperm whale tracking component of this expedition.