Our Team

Dr. Melinda Rekdahl

Dr. Melinda (Mindi) Rekdahl is an Associate Marine Conservation Scientist with the Ocean Giants Program at WCS. Her research interests include bioacoustics, behavioral ecology and marine conservation. More specifically, she is interested in how the acoustic (including biological and anthropogenic noise) and physical environment influence marine mammal behavior and distribution, and how this information can be used to inform conservation and management decisions. Melinda completed her PhD at the University of Queensland and has over 17 years of experience managing and working on marine mammal research and conservation projects in a number of locations around the world including Africa, Australia, Antarctica and now in New York. She has extensive experience coordinating and implementing marine mammal field research projects and is proficient at the use of bioacoustics software packages, detection and localization of cetacean vocalizations from large datasets and ambient noise analyses. She has worked on a range of marine mammal species and has extensive experience deploying PAM equipment, Digital Acoustic Tags (Dtags), collection of biopsy samples, photo identification and all aspects of data collection during aerial and vessel-based surveys. She has over 25 peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations and technical reports. Melinda is an invited member of IUCN SSC Sirenia Specialist Group and a Research Associate at the Centre for Environmental Sustainability in the Earth Institute at Columbia University. She is also a member of NYSERDA’s Marine Mammal Specialist Committee for Best Management Practices and the Marine Mammal Cumulative Impacts Working Group. Melinda has co-supervised a number of graduate and undergraduate Columbia University students.