Robin Baird

The resident island-associated population of false killer whales in Hawai‘i was listed as Endangered in 2012. Despite a lot of research before and after 2012, little has been done to protect this population, and it has been declining steadily since. The open-ocean population of false killer whales is the most-frequently recorded cetacean bycaught in the Hawai‘i-based longline fishery. Despite a Take Reduction Plan that has been in place since 2013, bycatch has increased. This presentation will focus on the conservation and management of false killer whales in Hawaiian waters, including the role of science and the factors that influence conservation action (and inaction).

Robin Baird obtained his Ph.D. in Biology from Simon Fraser University in 1994, and was a Post-doctoral Fellow at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada from 1996 to 1999. For many years his research focused on marine mammals in British Columbia and Washington, and while an itinerant biologist after graduate school he participated in studies in New Zealand, Japan, Mexico, North Carolina, Nova Scotia, Iceland, and Italy. Since 1999 his primary focus has been
a multi-species, multi-question study of Hawaiian odontocetes. He has authored or co-authored more than 150 peer-reviewed publications, two books (Killer Whales of the World published in 2002 and The Lives of Hawai‘i’s Dolphins and Whales, Natural History and Conservation, published in 2016 by the University of Hawai‘i Press) and a number of book chapters. Since 2003 he has been living in Olympia, Washington, working as a Research Biologist with Cascadia Research Collective. He is also an Affiliate Faculty at the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology, Oregon State University, and Hawai‘i Pacific University, a member of the False Killer Whale Take Reduction Team, and an Editor of Endangered Species Research.