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Who We Are
Founders and directors
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Dr Paul Spong
Founder and Co-Director
Dr. Paul Spong is the President of the Pacific Orca Society, and founder of OrcaLab. He acquired a Ph.D. in physiological psychology from U.C.L.A. in 1966. Dr. Spong began studying dolphins and orcas in 1967, initially in captivity, then in the wild. His insights led to his involvement in the save-the-whales movement during the 1970s. In the 1980’s, following the “moratorium” on commercial whaling, he returned to full-time research. His work is focused on the long-term life history of the ‘Northern Resident Community’ of British Columbia orcas and on the protection of orca habitat. He created the “Free Corky” campaign in 1990 and has worked tirelessly on behalf of captive whales and dolphins. At OrcaLab, he has been involved in implementing technology that connects people to the natural world via the Internet (Orca Live, explore). Of deep concern to him are climate change issues.
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Helena Symonds
Co-Director
Helena Symonds is a co-director of OrcaLab. Helena obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre at the University of British Columbia. After receiving her teacher qualifications she taught at the Alert Bay School. In partnership with Paul, she has been developing OrcaLab since 1979. Helena’s special interests are in orca acoustics, social aspects of orca behaviour, and impacts of human activities on orca habitat. Helena is largely responsible for the “assistant” programme which has brought more than 300 international volunteers to OrcaLab since 1983. With Japanese and American partners, Helena and Paul have brought the everyday life of orcas to the world via the Web. Together, they are involved in numerous quality-of-life issues that affect orcas and other marine wildlife, including commercial whaling, captivity, whale watching and Critical Habitat.
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Janie Wray
Co-Director
Janie Wray first came to OrcaLab as a volunteer in the 1990s. Since then, she has studied the acoustic traditions and culture of whale behaviour for the last 20 years. She is the co-founder of the North Coast Cetacean Society and Cetacea Lab. In 2016 she founded BC Whales and the Fin Island Marine Institute and became the science director for OrcaLab. She is devoted to the protection of whales and their precious habitat needs along the coast of British Columbia.
Our team
Megan Hockin-Bennett
Videographer and Archivist
Megan arrived in British Columbia in 2012 with a passion for whales and capturing the natural world. Over the past decade, Megan has been creating beautiful videos for us, managing our content and deploying our remote cameras. She is now an award-winning filmmaker. From skiing at the top of the mountain to diving the depths of the ocean, Megan enjoys spending every second outdoors.
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Suzie Hall
Lab Coordinator and Writer
Suzie first visited us in 2017. After graduating with a Master’s of Physics from the University of Leeds, she followed her lifelong love of whales and the ocean to BC. She was drawn in by the mysterious acoustic world of the orcas and a desire to aid in their protection. Suzie coordinates the running of the lab and data collection during our peak seasons and has done a few seasons of caretaking over the winter. She loves writing the daily summaries with Helena, as a full immersion into the days of the Northern Residents. A keen diver, hiker, and lover of the outdoors: life on Hanson suits her well!
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Quin McIntire
Systems Technician
Quin found OrcaLab by canoe in February 2019. He was completely taken in by our work and returned that fall to learn more. Since then, he has become an incredible help to our efforts through the maintenance of our remote off-grid systems. He works with our partner explore.org to install and upgrade our infrastructure each year, alongside managing our local network and live streams.
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Our dedicated assistants
We have welcomed volunteer lab assistants at OrcaLab since the 1980s and could not do what we do without their help. We have many dedicated assistants and could not possibly name them all. Here are some of the ‘regulars’ who return often and help us identify calls by listening live from all corners of the world!
If you’ve spent time assisting at the lab over the past few decades and would like to be included on this page, please send us an email.