Vice President of Marine Mammal Conservation Dr. Randall Wells is a co-founder and directs Brookfield Zoo Chicago's Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, the world’s longest-running dolphin conservation research program. Since 1970, he and colleagues have studied bottlenose dolphins living year-round in a long-term resident community in Sarasota Bay, Florida. Today, the team’s research has set the gold standard for bottlenose dolphin research and conservation worldwide.
Wells began studying bottlenose dolphins in Sarasota Bay as a high school volunteer at Mote Marine Laboratory in 1970. Brookfield Zoo Chicago hired him in 1989, when we began operating the SDRP, and continued and expanded a collaborative research program to examine the behavior, social structure, life history, ecology, health, and population biology of bottlenose dolphins.
Wells’ impact is far-ranging, spanning across a variety of marine mammal species. For example, he’s worked with the highly endangered vaquita in the Gulf of California, spinner and pantropical spotted dolphins in Hawaii, Guiana dolphins in Brazil, Atlantic spotted dolphins over the West Florida Shelf, franciscanas off Argentina and Brazil, bottlenose dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, Bermuda, Greece, and the Galápagos, and other species such as whales, manatees, and more. His expertise has informed global conservation strategies and efforts from Mexico to China.
Wells has authored/co-authored 4 books and more than 350 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. Alongside his research, he’s deeply invested in educating the public and the next generation of conservationists, giving hundreds of lectures and advising more than 100 graduate students and 500 undergraduate interns through the SDRP.
Currently, Wells serves on the Committee of Scientific Advisors on Marine Mammals for the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission, IUCN’s Cetacean Specialist Group, and the Steering Group for NOAA's U.S. Animal Telemetry Network. He is a charter member and past-President of the Society for Marine Mammalogy, and in 2022, he received their Kenneth S. Norris Lifetime Achievement Award.
Wells received his Bachelor’s degree in Zoology from the University of South Florida in 1975, his Masters in Zoology from the University of Florida in 1978, and his PhD in Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1986. He was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1987. After more than 50 years, he still gets a thrill out of observing dolphins in the wild.
