Asha DeVos, PhD
ASHA DE VOS is a Sri Lankan blue whale researcher and the founder of Oceanswell, Sri Lanka’s first marine conservation, research, and education organization. She was born in the island nation of Sri Lanka and grew up there. Unable to study marine biology in her home country, Asha left to study at St. Andrews University in Scotland, where she did her undergraduate work. She then got her masters at the University of Oxford in England, followed by getting her PhD at the University of Western Australia. Asha conducted her post-doc work at the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC), which brought her to the Monterey Bay area in 2013.
Asha wanted to be an adventure scientist from the time she was six. Her parents gave her National Geographic magazines, which became her motivation to explore and adventure and seek out things that no one else had seen. Plus, Asha visualized herself in the magazine, a feat she has now accomplished!
Also while a child, she started swimming and developed a growing passion for the ocean. At the age of 18 she decided she was going to do marine biology as her degree. Asha followed through, leaving Sri Lanka and engaging in her academic studies around the world.
After her extensive theoretical studies, she set out to get some fieldwork experience. Asha took off to New Zealand where she lived in a tent for six months and was involved in a variety of projects including working with Hector’s dolphins and freshwater eels.
Asha then had the opportunity to get on a whale research vessel that was circumnavigating the globe. She got on board in the Maldives, and one day, while tracking sperm whales off the coast of Sri Lanka, Asha saw a very powerful, tall blow in the distance, clearly not a sperm whale. She got quite excited because she knew that was a blue whale.
The boat moved towards the blue whale, which turned out to be an aggregation of blue whales. She expected to see them mating, which is what one usually sees in warm waters, but that was not the case here. Instead of mating and babies, Asha saw whale poop, and it was that bright red blue whale poop that started her on the trajectory of a blue whale career.
Asha realized that these whales had not read the same textbooks she had, which all said that baleen whales migrate from cold water feeding areas to warm water breeding/calving grounds. Rather the Sri Lankan blues were feeding in the warm tropical waters five degrees above the equator. This anomaly led Asha to pursue the answers to so many questions that arose regarding the uncharacteristic behavior of this population of whales.
After completing her post-doc work at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Asha returned to Sri Lanka where she has launched her own non-profit called Oceanswell. Asha feels it is important to empower Sri Lankans with a local ‘small but mighty’, yet global voice. She wants people to realize it does not matter where you are, but you can be a powerful force for the oceans. Oceanswell’s focus is on the next generation of ocean heroes, particularly diverse ocean heroes, including those from under-represented nations who will conduct marine conservation research, and also engage others in conversations and story telling about the magic of the world’s oceans.
Asha sees training citizens of her own country as essential to creating opportunities for the young people who will be able to carry on the work when she is gone. Asha visualizes creating an army of engaged, educated people to protect the oceans. She feels an obligation and responsibility to let people learn with her and join her on the adventure to create a collective voice, which can drive the change that we need for ocean and marine protection.
