Lauren Bell was raised on Alaska’s coastlines, with salt in her hair, sand in her toes, and a love of the ocean at her core. She left the state to attend college at Stanford University, where she studied the social behavior of Jumbo squid throughout her bachelors degree in biology. She then returned to Alaska to pursue her masters in marine biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, conducting research on Arctic marine food webs. During this period, she traveled to Sitka for the first time to attend Sitka WhaleFest where she immediately fell in love with the southeast Alaska community and its surrounding ecosystems. 

Lauren migrated to Sitka to work for the Sitka Sound Science Center as a research biologist in 2015, working on the development of a long-term monitoring program for pinto abalone in Sitka Sound. For the past 6 years she has been back in the classroom, pursuing her PhD through the University of California Santa Cruz. Her research investigates how high latitude seaweed will respond to climate change, and the consequences of these changes for the rest of the coastal food web.

You can typically find her under the water, in the mountains with her husband and daughter, or cooking with locally harvested fish and seaweeds. She loves sharing in the wonder and discovery of the natural world, and she looks forward to WhaleFest every year. Lauren is thrilled to be joining SSSC as Research Director in summer 2023.

Lauren was born and raised in Sitka, Alaska. She spent most of her childhood on the water and in the mountains, camping, hiking, hunting, fishing, and exploring the outdoors. She attended Sitka WhaleFest many times growing up in Sitka. After graduating from Sitka High School, she attended Brandeis University in Boston, Massachusetts, where she graduated with a B.A. in International and Global Studies, and a minor in Mathematics. During a study abroad semester in Madagascar, Lauren became interested in marine science and whale research, and began volunteering for Jan Straley, a professor of Biology and whale researcher at UAS Sitka Campus. In 2009 she returned to Southeast Alaska and was hired as a research technician on the Southeast Alaska Sperm Whale Avoidance Project (SEASWAP), a collaborative project among fishermen, scientists, and fisheries managers working to better understand sperm whale interactions with commercial longline fishing vessels. Throughout her tenure with SEASWAP, Lauren worked as an acoustic technician, managed research grants, and obtained a master’s degree in Marine Mammal Science at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland. She recently received her Ph.D. in Fisheries from the University of Alaska Fairbanks College of Fisheries & Ocean Sciences, where her research focused on the diet and movement of depredating sperm whales in the Gulf of Alaska. Lauren teaches biology and fisheries technology courses and has been involved with WhaleFest as a symposium speaker and scientist in various capacities. In her free time, Lauren can be found hiking, camping, fishing, or hunting with family, friends, and her dog.

Amy Bishop (she/her) earned a bachelor’s in zoology, with a minor in writing from Northern Michigan University in 2009. After graduating, she spent the summer in Seward, Alaska as a research intern with the Alaska SeaLife Center, studying harbor seals and tidewater glaciers. Continuing that work in graduate school, Amy earned her master’s in coastal environmental management in 2011, and then hopped ‘across the pond’ to the United Kingdom where she spent 4 years studying the behavioral ecology of grey seals for her PhD. She returned to Alaska in 2015 and is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alaska Anchorage where her team studies the movement and behavioral ecology of marine predators (sharks, pinnipeds, seabirds), and the food-web dynamics in the North Pacific and North Atlantic coastal oceans. Projects in her lab emphasize and explore ecosystem connections such as predator-prey dynamics, contaminant flow through food webs, including subsistence foods, and impacts of changing environments on animal movements and behaviors. When not at work, you can find her painting, walking her dog, at pub trivia, experimenting with new recipes, reading comic books, or writing with a nice cup of tea.

John Moran is a research fisheries biologist at NOAA’s Auke Bay Laboratories in Juneau, Alaska. He received a M.S. from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in fisheries and completed his undergraduate studies in zoology and marine biology at the University of New Hampshire. John has worked across Alaska (Southeast, Kodiak, Bristol Bay, Prince William Sound, and the North Slope) studying fish, birds, and mammals. He is currently focusing his efforts on the impacts of recovering humpback whale populations on Pacific herring and the effects of whale watching on humpback whales.

We are excited to welcome Tiffany Pearson to the Sitka WhaleFest team, and looking forward to a wonderful 27th Festival with her in the lead!

As a lifelong Sitkan with many childhood memories of hiking mountains and boating along the endless miles of coast lines that surround us, Lisa has developed a deep love and admiration for the natural environment. She studied the visual arts and English at the University of Alaska Southeast. Lisa started her own Art business in 2011 and continues to create and sell her work today. In 2013 she co-founded the Island Artists Gallery Cooperative, serving for a time on the board, and continues to be a member artist. In 2018 she started work at Allen Marine Inc, leaving in 2023 as the Marketing Content and Design Specialist. She started at the Sitka Sound Science Center in spring of 2023. Lisa spends her free time with her husband and two young sons experiencing the beauty of our natural world.

She is excited to help spread the reach of WhaleFest within and outside of the science community.