Andrea Bonilla

I am a Colombian biologist with a Masters in Marine and Coastal Sciences.  For the last 7 years, I have been working on ecology projects focused on whales. I focused my master’s thesis on whale acoustics to describe the Gulf of California’s resident population. After completing my master’s degree I was involved in coordinating various research projects. I was a as part of the Urban’s Lab (PRIMMA) in Mexico. I also took part in studying Cuvier’s beaked whale and other cetaceans of Guadalupe Island, México. In 2020, I was in charge of the fieldwork of the ghost net extraction project and I was the campaign coordinator of Milagro operation of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Both these efforts contributed to the rescue of the “vaquita” in the Upper Gulf of California.

Since 2016, I have dedicated my personal time to writing and leading projects in the marine ecosystems around Colombia and collaborative projects with national institutions in Colombia. Thus, I developed the pilot of two projects about acoustic landscapes, one in Antarctica and another one in the Colombian Pacific with Humpback Whale G Stock.

As a Ph.D. student, I am interested in the understanding of submarine soundscapes and noise impact on marine mammals. I want to use Passive Acoustic Monitoring to acquire long-term data to evaluate how submarine soundscapes evolve under different human impact levels using marine mammals as model.