Kirsten Freja Young

Most of my work focuses on understanding the population ecology of marine species, particularly in our current era of rapid environmental change and industrialization of human activities in the oceans. I use cross-disciplinary techniques, such as acoustics, population and conservation genomics, eDNA, behavioural observations, photoidentification and morphological analyses to investigate marine mammal populations. Much of my most recent research has focused on the deep diving whales – sperm whales and beaked whales.

I work in primary research and provide science writing and advice for governments (for example, New Zealand Department of Conservation), inter-government institutions (for example, South Pacific Regional Environment Programme) and non-governmental organisations (for example, Greenpeace, International Fund for Animal Welfare and the Centre for International Environmental Law).