Biography

Stephanie is a marine mammal scientist who began her career studying finback and humpback whales from a the most remote lighthouse on the east coast, Mount Desert Rock off the coast of Bar Harbor, Maine.

She has a bachelor’s degree in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic and a master’s degree in Marine Policy from the University of Rhode Island.  She has worked on various marine mammal projects, including studying the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale, assisting with an Antarctic killer whale satellite tagging project, and the BAS Southern right whale project based at KEP in 2019.

For over twenty seasons Stephanie has worked as an expedition leader, naturalist, lecturer and Zodiac driver on expedition cruise ships in both polar regions and throughout the many parts of the world.

Before joining BAS, Stephanie worked as the Environmental and Conservation Policy Officer for the Government of Tristan da Cunha, one of the UK’s Overseas Territories. She helped create policies for their Marine Protection Zone, the fourth largest no-take zone in the world. Stephanie represented the UKOTs at COP26 in Glasgow and the UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon.

She joined BAS in 2023 as project manager for the Darwin Plus Hungry Humpbacks project. She was part of the project field team during the austral summers of 2024 and 2025 as well as managing co-ordination and delivery of the project.  In October 2024, she also became the project manager for the Darwin Plus Sustained Monitoring of Whales at South Georgia project.

Research interests

Collaborations