Susanna Blackwell

OrganizationEmailPhoneAddressAptos , California 93117United StatesBioSusanna B. Blackwell, Ph.D., senior scientist at Greeneridge Sciences, received a Licence ès Sciences in Zoology from the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and her doctoral degree in Biology from the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC). She has held postdoctoral positions at UCSC, the University of Stockholm and Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford University, in all cases working with large marine vertebrates (northern and southern elephant seals, bottlenose dolphins, Baltic grey seals, albacore tuna, and Atlantic and Pacific bluefin tuna). She has been involved in the design and manufacture of several types of seal data loggers, recording parameters such as depth, temperature, heart rate, swim speed, activity levels, bioluminescence, and sound as a function of time. Her field experience has brought her from rodent trapping in alpine meadows to acoustic tracking of tuna in the Pacific Ocean, acoustic monitoring for bowhead whales in the Alaskan Arctic, and studies of bowhead whales and narwhals in Greenland. She joined Greeneridge in May 2000 and has since collected and analyzed acoustic data on man-made sounds, such as those produced by impact and vibratory pile-driving, airgun pulses, and numerous construction activities, to assess their range and impact on marine vertebrates. She has analyzed her recordings for sound level parameters and frequency content and assessed the potential impacts on marine mammal and fish species. She is the first author of ten refereed journal articles and a co-author in 28 others. She is a member and Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, the Society for Marine Mammalogy, and Sigma Xi (National Society for Scientific Research).

Science Specialties

acoustics, biology

Current Research

Effects of industrial noise on marine mammals