Katlyn Taylor
KATLYN TAYLOR is the manager, as well as naturalist and a staff biologist of Discovery Whale Watch. She is also the co-creator of Wild Monterey Bay and President of the Monterey Chapter of the American Cetacean Society at the time of her interview.
Katlyn was born in Portland, Oregon and grew up in Oregon City, OR. She has always been interested in everything wildlife. As a child, Katlyn went to the beach at least once or twice a summer with her parents and sister. Her family bought tide pool books and taught themselves how to identify the animals and plants in the tide pools. These trips were always exciting. If the Taylor family needed a flashlight to get up at the best low tide of the day for the tide pools, her mom made sure that they’d get a flashlight! They did their tide pooling at iconic Haystack Rock at Cannon Beach, which also had nesting puffins. Sometimes they would do their tide pooling at Ecola State Park and Indian Beach.
Katlyn’s father was a high school math teacher and is now a high school principal. Her mom was initially a stay-at-home mom, then a small business owner, after which she became a teaching aid for elementary and middle school. She ultimately became a high school administrator serving as both a vice principal and principal.
Katlyn says that even though her parents weren’t scientists, they always provided her the resources to answer the questions she had about nature, and they facilitated opportunities for her to experience it first hand. Her mom may not have had all the answers, but she knew how to help Katlyn find them.
Katlyn attended Oregon State University (OSU) in Corvallis, Oregon, also located in the Willamette Valley where she grew up. It wasn’t until she got to college that Katlyn began to dig into marine science academically. She initially took a pass-no pass class about whales taught by Jim Sumich, renowned for his work with gray whales, thinking she was up for a weekend of fun at Newport Beach. How hard could it be? Katlyn kept asking questions in class, and Sumich kept saying, “Katlyn, science does not know the answer to your question!” so she decided she’d have to study marine biology.
Katlyn was able to take a number of marine mammal courses while at OSU, since the school has an excellent marine mammal program. While at OSU, Katlyn joined the Oregon Chapter of the American Cetacean Society and took the Naturalist class they offered. She graduated with a Bachelors in Science degree in Marine Biology and a Bachelors in Art in International Studies.
Just prior to graduation, Katlyn applied to several places for work and got offered an unpaid internship at Monterey Bay Whale Watch (MBWW). She packed her car and drove down with her dad, hoping for the best.
Katlyn had been to Monterey once before. In 2013 when the warm water “Blob” parked itself off the West Coast of the US and hundreds of humpback whales showed up to feed in Monterey Bay, the event made the news in Oregon. At Thanksgiving, Katlyn and her mom got online and checked out all the sightings listed by the various whale watch companies on Monterey Bay. They then Google mapped to see how long it would take to get there if they left right then, hoping to be there in time for a morning whale watch trip. But Katlyn’s dad put the kibosh on that plan.
During the following Winter Break, Katlyn volunteered at the Oregon State Parks Whale Watch Interpretation Program, which takes place all up and down the Oregon Coast during gray whale migration. Her station saw one whale the whole rainy and foggy week. Four days later she and her parents drove down to Monterey. When they arrived they parked at Pt. Pinos, and in the first hour they saw 30 gray whales. Katlyn realized the whales had to have swum right by her post in Oregon, but she missed them all thanks to the poor visibility.
She and her family then went whale watching, and Katlyn decided she needed to figure out how to come back to the area. The following March, Katlyn drove down again with some friends for Spring Break. She went whale watching again, chatted up some of the whale watch companies about a job, and they told her to keep trying. Then she got the internship.
A month into the internship Katlyn started getting paid working in the company shop through the winter, and then in the spring some paid jobs opened up on the boats. Katlyn worked on the boats pretty much full time that whole summer, including working with a BBC film crew, and also doing research for Nancy Black, the owner of MBWW. She continued her work there for two years until she pursued a new opportunity at Discovery Whale Watch. At MBWW Katlyn had met “this person named Jodi”, who invited her to work on Wild Monterey Bay with her. Katlyn said yes, and the rest is history.
