Effectively-identified internationally by his study on big sharks, sea turtles and dolphins, Heithaus also serves as dean of FIU’s College of Arts, Sciences & Schooling.
The Explorers Club is an intercontinental expert society regarded for extended-held exacting expectations for membership and a stringent vetting procedure. It promotes and supports the scientific exploration of land, sea, air and space by sponsoring investigation and schooling in the pure, geographic and organic sciences, cultural documentation, and humanitarian support and outreach. Users have incorporated guys and women of all ages who have been 1st to the North Pole, 1st to the South Pole, initially to the summit of Mount Everest, very first to the deepest point in the ocean, and first to the floor of the moon. Heithaus acquired his formal invitation this spring.
Renowned oceanographer and Explorers Club member Sylvia Earle wrote in aid of Heithaus’ nomination, emphasizing his use of chopping-edge technologies like drones and animal-borne cameras to research dolphins, seals, sharks, turtles and whales. In her reference letter, she also mentioned his lengthy-time period exploration in Shark Bay, Australia.
For more than 20 decades, Heithaus has performed a single of the world’s most in-depth experiments on sharks — answering crucial questions about how sharks stay and operate, as properly as how they help sustain healthful populations of other animals and even ocean crops. These findings have assisted inform conservation priorities and techniques around the world.
“In the very best traditions of the Explorers Club, Dean Heithaus has evidently evidenced his motivation to the furtherance of exploration, discovery and science. He is an ardent defender of the purely natural globe and is committed to sharing his study and exploration with the rest of the environment,” reported Mireya Mayor, director of the College or university of Arts, Sciences & Education’s Exploration and Science Communications and Explorers Club fellow. “I know he will bring an abundance of vitality — as effectively as a prosperity of firsthand expertise as a scientist-explorer — to the Explorers Club.”
To be named an Explorers Club Fellow, researchers should have a demonstrated document of contributing scientific results as a result of fieldwork or explorations. Through his job, Heithaus has authored or co-authored extra than 175 peer-reviewed journal articles or blog posts and book chapters and co-edited 4 textbooks on the biology of sharks and their family. He is also a person of the guide scientists for World Finprint, an intercontinental venture supported by the Paul G. Allen Household Foundation that is delivering desperately desired details to protect sharks and rays alongside the world’s coral reefs and support rebuild populations that are in issues.