Dr. Heike Vester
Biologist & Founder
Specialised in social behaviour & bio-acoustics of marine animals
Currently, Heike is an associate professor at Nord University in Bodo, Norway
and teaches Marine Mammal Biology (BIO2022 and BIO2023) at the faculty for Biosciences and Aquaculture, and is a scientist of the Ecology Group.
Born in Germany, she studied Biology in Berlin and moved to Northern
Norway in 1998. Did her Master thesis in Arctic Biology and Physiology at the University of Tromsø between 1999-2003 and moved to Henningsvær, Lofoten islands, in 2004. Since then Heike have studied the behavior and communication of Orcas in northern Norway and in August 2005 she founded Ocean Sounds.
Both present and previous studies since 2006 include all whales and dolphins, in particular long-finned pilot whales in the Vestfjord of northern Norway. In 2008 she went to Patagonia, Chile, to participate in a Scientific Tourism project which lasted a couple of years.
2012-2016 she became a lecturer for Animal Behavior and Biology of Marine Mammals at the University of Nordland in Bodø and supervised bachelor and master students. In 2017 she began her PhD in Biology on the vocal behavior of killer whales and long-finned pilot whales in northern Norway at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen in cooperation with the Cognitive Ethology Group/German Primate Center at the University of Göttingen in Germany, the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization.
