Dr. Diane Gendron
Diane Gendron was born on March 30 th 1963 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. After graduating in Biology with a specialty in limnology at University of Quebec in 1985, she directed her focus to blue whales, first through a voluntary internship and then as a research assistant at the Mingan Island Cetacean Study along the North shore of the St Lawrence River. During the following three years she was also introduced to the blue whales in the Gulf of California, a wintering/feeding area that captivated her and became the topic of her M.S. Thesis in 1988 at the Centro Interdisciplinario de Ciencias Marina from Instituto Politecnico Nacional (CICIMAR-IPN) based in La Paz, southern Baja California. Her thesis got the 1992 Best Thesis Award in Biology from the IPN and she was subsequently hired specifically to develop a cetacean ecology lab at CICIMAR in 1992.
Since then she has conducted research on cetaceans, in particular monitoring blue whales in the Gulf of California and west coast of Baja California which was the basis of her Phd Thesis at CICESE, Ensenada, where she graduated in 2003 During this period and along with over 50 postgraduate students, she studied different biological aspects of blue whales at an individual level through a photo-identification method that produced a unique blue whale sighting history of over 800 blue whales linked to a detailed database of individual information such as sex, maternal lineage, age class and female reproductive state, along with a variety of biological samples. This data set has been instrumental in estimating population parameters and validating new health parameters. Other aspects include abundance and survival estimates, distribution patterns, genetic variability, health assessments and physiological plasticity, endocrine physiology, feeding habits, acoustic studies and human-related whale watching impacts. These findings have been published in over 50 peer reviewed scientific papers and presented in several conferences.
Her dedication to blue whale conservation reached the Governmental level in 2009 promoting the inclusion of the blue whale in 40+ conservation programs on endangered species (PACE). Following the most urgent action proposed in this document, in 2009 she focused her research using the focal animal survey to study individual behaviour, thereby increasing her knowledge on habitat use, reproduction strategy, body conditions and advancing whale watching (WW) activity toward a more passive observation method, developed in a joint project with the WW captains in the National Park of Bahia de Loreto.
Parallel to her research she has shared her knowledge with the general public through participation in several documentaries (BBC Natural History unit, National Geographic, Thalassa and Ushuaia) the last one being the principal scientist in the IMAX film “ Blue whale, return of the giants”.
