Sean O’Callaghan

I graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Applied Freshwater and Marine Biology from the then Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT) in 2018 where I focused on developing a way to measure live Irish common dolphins using laser photogrammetry for my thesis. I continued my measurement work during my MSc in Conservation Behaviour also at GMIT but this time I measured sperm whales with a drone in sub-Arctic Norway with the whale watching company Whale2Sea in 2020. A drone was used to gather this data while on the water with live whales. After working in Ireland for a few years I spent time abroad in the Azores, Catalonia and Norway collaborating with various European projects and research organisations ranging from common dolphins to fin whales.

I am now a PhD student focusing on assessing Northeast Atlantic sperm whale whales from their breeding grounds around the Azores north to the high latitude feeding grounds used by male whales off Norway. This project picks up where the MSc thesis left off to continue the measurement assessment work while developing additional tools to assess this iconic species life history with international collaborators.

Project Title
Sperm Whale Scale: Northeast Atlantic sperm whale life history assessment