Ari Friedlaender, PhD

ARI FRIEDLAENDER is an Associate Professor and researcher at the University of California at Santa Cruz where he heads the Bio-Telemetry and Behavioral Ecology Laboratory. His previous lab was at Oregon State University. Ari is also a founder and one of the senior leadership members of the California Ocean Alliance, a non-profit collaboration of scientists, educators and conservationists.

Most of Ari’s research involves studying the foraging behavior of marine mammals and the impacts of human behavior on them. He and his colleagues study marine mammals in natural environments where they do what they do naturally, but he also does experimental work trying to understand the impacts of climate change, Naval sonar and fishing gear on these animals.

Ari was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He grew up on the Connecticut coast where whaling was a big part of the cultural history, but he was more into sharks as a little boy. Like most boys, Ari was into things that bite other things.

Ari knew he wanted to study marine biology when he was just three or four. His parents tell him he asked them to join the Cousteau Society on his behalf when he was four, and they got a letter back saying he was the youngest member of the Cousteau Society.

Ari’s academic background in marine science started in college. He originally went to school in Maine and then did his graduate work at Duke University in North Carolina. His undergrad advisor allowed him to study seals at the Mystic Aquarium. Then he took a course in marine mammal biology at Duke Marine Lab in the summertime, which introduced him more broadly to marine mammals. At that point he met some of the mentors he’d have later in life, like his masters and PhD adviser.

In his own words, Ari “ended up in the Monterey Bay area as a conscious choice to be in the best area to study a wide diversity of marine mammals in a pretty amazing environment close to a lot of places that do other research.”