MMRP Hawaii | Interns

CURRENT INTERNS

SARAH PERRYMAN

Sarah graduated from Colorado State University with a B.S. in Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology in May 2022. During her time there, she gained skills in stakeholder involvement through her work with the Public Lands Policy Group. She founded her university's female faction freeride ski team, showing her commitment to gender activism. She is also a member of the Stio home team, while serving as ambassador for Alpinistas. After graduation, she worked with Colorado Parks and Wildlife on Lynx and Wolverine projects. As of May 2023, Sarah is interning at MMRP, assisting Martin Van Aswegen in using drones to study the impact of reproduction and migration on humpback whales in a changing climate. This internship is enhancing her skills in UAS handling, data analysis, Matlab, photo-ID, necropsy, Poimapper, and Happywhale. Sarah hopes to utilize her diverse background in her pursuit of higher education to conduct research that informs climate-adaptive management strategies.

CAMERON NEMETH

Cameron graduated from the University of North Texas in December of 2021 with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Human Development and Family Sciences. He started his second Bachelor's degree in Marine Biology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in the spring of 2022, and began an internship with MMRP where he assists Liah McPherson with spinner dolphin abundance and demographics off the west coast of O'ahu. He is developing skills in photo-ID, data processing, and basic seamanship. Cameron has always had a deep curiosity and passion for marine mammals, and will take the skills and experiences learned with MMRP to pursue higher education in marine sciences, and one day make a career rooted in conserving and regenerating our oceans.

PEARL THOMPSON

Pearl is an undergraduate studying marine biology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa in the university’s honors program. She began her internship with MMRP in the spring of 2022 and she works assisting Kirby Parnell with her research on Hawaiian monk seal acoustics. Pearl analyzes passive acoustic data to categorize Hawaiian monk seal calls and is learning to work with new software like MATLAB and Triton. She also has a passion for scuba diving and works in the dive safety program at UH as a scientific diver to assist with the training process of new scientific divers. Pearl is a recipient of the Entering and Creative Research Work through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program at UH Manoa.

LILY MAGEE

Lily Magee is a sophomore at the University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa working towards a degree in Marine Ecology and Conservation. She is from North Carolina and spent time as a child growing up in Sydney, Australia, where she found her love for the ocean! Since being at UH, she has developed a passion for sustainability, surfing, and marine mammals! She started interning with the MMRP in fall of 2021 where she assisted Dr. Claire Lacey with spinner dolphin research. Lily is currently assisting PhD candidate Kirby Parnell with her research looking at the effects of anthropogenic noise on the Hawaiian monk seal. Through these opportunities, she has gained a variety of skills such as photo-ID data collection and processing, basic seamanship, and acoustics data analysis through software such as MATLAB and Triton. Lily is also a recipient of the Entering Research and Creative Work through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program at UH Manoa. Lily is interested in marine mammals, sharks, ocean conservation and climate change, and knows this experience will help her to have a career surrounding that!

Taylor Rouse

Taylor graduated from Iowa State University in 2021 with a B.S in Environmental Science and a minor in Data Science. While finishing her degree, she worked in a paleoclimatology lab and participated in a REU program with the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences where she evaluated the performance of remote sensing algorithms used to develop a carbon monitoring system in the Gulf of Maine. After Graduation, she worked as a naturalist on board Pacific Whale Foundations eco tour boats and volunteered with their research and conservation departments in Maui Nui. She spent all of 2023 sailing as a first mate and dive master through the Vava’u island group in the Kingdom of Tonga. Taylor began interning with MMRP in March 2023 and is currently assisting Lewis Evans process done imagery for photogrammetry measurements of humpback whales in Hawaii, helping assess the impact of climate change on their bioenergetic demands. She hopes to use the knowledge and technical skills gained from this internship to pursue a higher degree focused on better understanding the impacts of climate change on marine mammal foraging ecology.