Role: Biology Professor
Home: Godfrey, IL
What intrigues/excites you most about going to Ecuador?
Incredible bird diversity, marine iguanas, giant tortoises.
Where is your favorite place you have visited and why?
Antarctica – Emperor penguins and everything around you is huge. Giant mountain ranges, giant icebergs, giant glaciers, giant penguins, deep blue oceans…..
How many countries have you been to up until this point and which ones?
I’ve conducted field research in more than 40 countries…far too many to list
What is one of your travel memories?
Sitting in a small boat in the Rock Islands of Palau as the sun was setting and listening to the eerie call of the Audubon’s Shearwaters coming to roost … Sitting on the ice edge in Terra Nova Sound in Antarctica as a pod of killer whales swim under me in crystal clear deep blue water … waiting on Matura Beach, Trinidad at midnight as a 350 kg leatherback hauls herself out of the surf to nest.
What makes you most curious (in life, in general)?
What lies beyond the horizon, beyond the mountain range, below the depth that I can see … AND how each individual living being “fits” into its environment.