ABOUT US
The Icelandic Orca Project started in 2008 and is the first dedicated program to have followed individuals over years, becoming the longest running orca research project in Icelandic waters.
We aim to understand the diverse aspects of orca lives; how many there are, where they go, what they eat, who they associate with, how they keep in touch and what threats they may face.
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Using a multidisciplinary approach we now know they form a society that is more fluid than previously thought, where whales with different movement patterns and feeding preferences are not socially segregated. We have also discovered that they produce unique sounds that have not been documented elsewhere.
Clearly this is a unique population and our ongoing research focusses on understanding the status of the population, as well as discovering and preventing any stressors to which it may be exposed.
WHO WE ARE
FILIPA SAMARRA
Founder | Principal Investigator
Filipa started the project in 2008, mainly focusing on the orcas’ acoustic behaviour for her PhD at the University of St Andrews (UK).
Her research focuses on resource specialisation and links to social and communication behaviours. She is currently the Director of the Westman Islands Research Centre of the University of Iceland, based on our main field site of Vestmannaeyjar, and co-supervises all the students working on the project.
PAUL WENSVEEN
Co-Investigator
Paul joined the project in 2013 and oversees much of our work on bioacoustics, the use of animal-borne tags and land-based observations.
Paul is currently a Research Specialist at the Westman Islands Research Centre of the University of Iceland and a co-principal investigator on the citizen-science project funded by the Earthwatch Institute since 2018. His research involves human impacts on marine mammals, especially underwater noise.
Learn about his project on northern bottlenose whales in the Northeast Atlantic here: Hypmo Project
ANNA SELBMANN
Research Specialist, Sudurnes Science and Learning Centre
Anna completed her Masters and PhD at the University of Iceland with the Icelandic Orca Project. Her research is mostly focused on killer whale acoustics and interspecific interactions between killer whales and pilot whales.
She is currently a Research Specialist at the Sudurnes Science and Learning Centre, where she explores whale occurrence in southwest Iceland and continues her work on killer whale acoustics.
Ayça is currently conducting a PhD at the University of Iceland on the foraging ecology and habitat use of killer whales.
AYÇA ELEMAN
PhD Student, University of Iceland
TATIANA MARCHON
PhD Student, University of Iceland
Tatiana is currently conducting a PhD at the University of Iceland on the social and behavioural context of the acoustic communication of killer whales in Iceland.
Chérine Baumgartner is currently conducting a PhD at ETH Zurich and the Icelandic Orca Project. Chérine's research focuses on genetic connectivity, of killer whales in the North Atlantic and vocal communication of killer whales.
CHÉRINE BAUMGARTNER
PhD student, ETH Zurich
LUKE PENKETH
Field Crew | Website Designer
Luke has been working in the field since graduating from University College London in 2012, including expeditions in the Philippines, Thailand and Scotland.
Luke participated in the summer fieldwork in 2018 and 2019 and is behind our website design.
COLLABORATORS
Patrick Miller
Professor at the University of St Andrews (UK). He has been studying killer whales since 1988, switching his focus of studies from North Pacific killer whales to the North Atlantic in 2005. His research has focused on cetacean behaviour and physiology using suction-cup tags, acoustic methods and visual observations to describe and understand social, foraging and resting behaviours. Patrick has supervised many of the students working on the project.
Andy Foote
Researcher at the University of Oslo (Norway). Andy has played a crucial role in the studies of Northeast Atlantic killer whales since 2007 and has been a long-term collaborator of the project, particularly on our work understanding movements between Iceland and Scotland as well as on killer whale genetics. Andy has also co-supervised some of the students in our project.
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Volker Deecke
Professor at the University of Cumbria (UK). He has been studying the acoustic behaviour of orcas both in the Pacific and the Atlantic and has been our collaborator in the field efforts of 2009/10 and 2014-16 in Vestmannaeyjar.
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Charlotte Curé
Researcher in the Acoustics Group at CEREMA (France). Charlotte has extensive experience with animal playbacks and cetacean playbacks in particular, that she has developed to study acoustic communication systems. Part of her expertise comes from conducting fieldworks on several cetacean species including killer whale and pilot whales in Norwegian and Icelandic waters. She has been our collaborator on studies of the role of acoustics in the interspecific interactions between pilot whales and killer whales.
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Olga Filatova
Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Southern Denmark (Denmark). She has been studying the cultural evolution of orca dialects and participated in the winter fieldwork (2013-2015) as an acoustician and has been our collaborator on analysis of Icelandic orca acoustic recordings.
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FUNDING
Research funding for past and current work has come from the following organizations:
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank our colleague Dr. Gísli Víkingsson for all his support to the project since its early years, without which many aspects of this project would not have been possible. Gísli was the head of Whale Research at the Marine and Freshwater Research Institute (MFRI). He was involved in research on Icelandic killer whales since the 1980s, when it first started, and then coordinated the photo-ID database being developed at the MFRI.
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We would also like to thank Gary Haskins, who took an active role in the fieldwork from 2016 to 2019, Sara Tavares, for her dedication to many aspects of the project during her PhD studies between 2013 and 2017, Miguel Neves, for assisting in the winters of 2013-5, the summers of 2014-17 and helping with public outreach activities during those years, Ivan Fedutin, who participated in the field efforts of the winters of 2013-2015 and Julie Béesau for assisting in the field in the winters of 2013/4 and summer 2016. We are also deeply grateful to Leonard Boekee for designing our project's logo.
Since the summer of 2017 we have been running a citizen science program with the Earthwatch Institute and we would like to thank all the citizen scientists who have been a part of this programme for their help and enthusiasm in the field!
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We would also like to thank the many other colleagues, students and fieldwork participants who have contributed to this project throughout the years, including (in alphabetical order): Alexandra Fennell, Allan Ligon, Anne Piémont, Anne Valerie Duc, Annemieke Podt, Annika Firmenich, Astrid van Ginneken, Craig Matkin, Dalia Barragán Barrera, Dan Olsen, David Gaspard, Deborah Vicari, Gaëtan Richard, Graeme Ellis, Hajime Yoshino, Hannah Williams, Hannah Wood, Jacopo Bridda, Jane Watson, Jennifer Stollery, Jón Pállson, José Cervantes-Henriksen, Kagari Aoki, Katarina Klementisová, Katherine Gavrilchuk, Katja Vinding, Katsufumi Sato, Leticiaà Legat, Luke O’Connor, Marianne Rasmussen, Marie Louis, Marjoleine Roos, Matthew Bivins, Melanie Chocholek, Mogens Trolle, Ralph Baylor, Rebecca Bakker, Rebecca Hooper, Rebecca Lyal, René Swift, Ricardo Antunes, Richard Bates, Sara De Clerck, Sébastien Houillier, Simon Moss, Timothy Carden, Tom Bean, and Yukihisa Kogure.
And last but not least, thanks to all our colleagues who every year work hard to keep this project going and to get to know more about Icelandic orcas!
