Pat Halpin and Ari Friedlaender Featured on National Geographic TV’s “Wild Chronicles”

Contact: Tim Lucas, 919-681-8084, tdlucas@duke.edu

Jan. 29, 2009

DURHAM, N.C. – Researchers from the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University will be featured in an upcoming episode of National Geographic TV’s weekly nature and environmental news magazine show, “Wild Chronicles.”

The episode features interviews with Pat Halpin, Gabel Associate Professor of the Practice of Marine Geospatial Ecology, and Ari S. Friedlaender, assistant research scientist at the Duke Marine Lab, about their work tagging and tracking whales off the coast of Massachusetts.

It will air on PBS affiliate stations nationwide the week of Feb. 1, 2009. Air times vary by market.

In the Raleigh-Durham area, the show is scheduled to air on WUNC-TV at 4 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 7.

Halpin, Friedlander and Nicholas School doctoral candidate Elliott Hazen were part of a multi-institutional team of marine scientists and conservationists who tagged and tracked humpbacks and other species of endangered whales in the waters of the Stellwagen Banks National Marine Sanctuary, as part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Sanctuaries Program. Dave Wiley, a marine mammal scientist at NOAA, was lead scientist.

Some of the whale-tagging footage used in the “Wild Chronicles” segment was shot by Halpin.

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Editor’s note: For help reaching Vengosh, contact Tim Lucas, 919/613-8084, tdlucas@duke.edu