Kate Indeck

Research Scientist

      Despite growing up in a landlocked US city far from the ocean, Kate’s desire to study cetaceans has been lifelong. In 2013, she graduated with Honours from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, with degrees in Marine Science and Environmental Studies. While at Eckerd, she completed a Senior Thesis that utilised passive acoustics to quantify the relative abundance of bottlenose dolphins during a severe harmful algal bloom event in Tampa Bay, Florida in 2005.

Prior to her Ph.D., Kate gained research experience in photo ID, genetic sampling, behavioural analyses, satellite and suction cup tagging, and acoustic monitoring and tracking through her involvement with a variety of different projects. These included studies on humpback whales (Alaska, Australia, New Zealand), snubfin and Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins (Queensland), Australian humpback and Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Western Australia), burrunan dolphins (Tursiops australis) and blue whales (South Australia).

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        Kate completed her doctorate (April 2020) with the Cetacean Ecology and Acoustics Laboratories at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, which examined adult female-calf acoustic communication in east Australian humpback whales during migration. She held a Postdoctoral Fellowship position in the Davies Lab from October 2021 to April 2025, before transitioning into a Research Scientist position at UNB in May 2025. During the past few years, she has contributed acoustic expertise to a Transport Canada-funded project that has been supporting glider deployments in the Laurentian Channel shipping lanes in the Gulf of St. Lawrence since 2019. The overarching aim of this work is to use underwater glider technology to acoustically detect North Atlantic right whales (and other at-risk baleen whale species) in near-real time to trigger dynamic vessel slowdowns that mitigate the risks of adverse interactions (i.e., ship strikes) between humans and this critically endangered species. She is an integral part of the near real-time monitoring team and will continue analyzing archival data to explore whale distribution and occurrence in relation to the region’s shipping lanes, as well as for call detection range analyses.

 

       In her free time, Kate enjoys watching baseball (go Cardinals!), hiking, reading, painting, yoga, and taking care of her numerous fur babies (1 dog, 1 cat, & 2 gerbils). Please check out her LinkedIn or follow her on Instagram!