Marine ecologist and bio-acoustician, Chandra Salgado Kent is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Marine Ecosystems Research in the School of Science and Quantitative Advisor at Graduate Research at Edith Cowan University.
Chandra is also the Director of Oceans Blueprint, a company that supports government, not-for profits, and community on wildlife ecology, conservation, and management of threatened species and their habitats as its priority to secure their future, with a focus on marine mammals.
She is also co-chief investigator for the Southwest Whale Ecology Study (SouWest), a program run through a collaboration of registered organisations (Oceans Blueprint, Western Whale Research and Eco Gecko Environment and Design).
Chandra first became involved in whale research in Australia’s southwest in 2008 when she deployed acoustic loggers in Geographe Bay to study whale song. In 2010, in collaboration with Western Whale Research, Chandra set up a theodolite station from a hill on Cape Naturaliste to complement the land-based citizen science surveys run by WWR.
Chandra’s career in marine related research spans 25 years, in which she has worked in a diversity of fields including mangrove forest restoration, fauna ranging from crustaceans to baleen whales, and impacts of human activities on marine animals.