Peter Hodum

I am an associate professor at the University of Puget Sound and the Director of Chile Programs for Oikonos Ecosystem Knowledge. I became fascinated by seabirds when I had an opportunity to work as a field assistant on a study of Leach's Storm-petrels while an undergraduate student at Bowdoin College. Those tiny seabirds enchanted me, and my passion for seabirds and their plight has only deepened in the intervening 25+ years. Since that transformative experience, I have had the privilege of studying seabird ecology and conservation in incredible places, including Antarctica, Mexico, New Zealand, California, Washington and, of course, Chile. My long-term programs in Chile, where I have been working since 2002, focus on applied conservation research, habitat restoration and community-based conservation and education programs in the Juan Fernández Islands and Isla Mocha. In addition to my work in Chile, I study the ecology and conservation of islands and seabirds in Washington. I received my Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of California-Davis for work on the comparative ecology of four petrel species that breed in Antarctica.

July 2016