Annalisa Berta is Professor of Biology in the Department of Biology at San Diego State University, San Diego, California and a Research Associate at the San Diego Natural History Museum in San Diego, California and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. She is an evolutionary biologist who for the last 30 years has been studying the anatomy, evolution and systematics of fossil and living marine mammals, especially pinnipeds and whales. She is a past President of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology and former Senior Editor of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology and Associate Editor of Marine Mammal Science. She has written 100 scientific papers and several books for the specialist as well as non-scientist including Return to the Sea: The Life and Evolutionary Times of Marine Mammals, 2012, (University of California Press) and the forthcoming book (summer, 2015) Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises: a natural history and species guide (University of Chicago Press). James Sumich is Professor Emeritus of Biology at Grossmont College and is the author of a popular book on gray whales. He has conducted research on gray whales from British Columbia to Baja California for four decades and has taught marine mammal course for nearly that long. His research has focused on the ecological physiology of baleen whales, especially the energetics of their seasonal fasting migrations.

Kit M. Kovacs is the Biodiversity Research Program Leader for the Norwegian Polar Institute in Troms Norway and Professor of Biology at University Studies on Svalbard (UNIS). She has worked with marine mammals in Polar Regions for the past 30 years, focusing primarily on studies in the fields of behavioral ecology and population biology. The impact of climate change on ice-associated species has been a topic of principal concern in recent years in her research projects. She is a past-president of the Society for Marine Mammalogy and the current Chair of the Pinniped Specialist Group for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). She is author/co-author of more than 200 primary publications and the author/editor of ten books and numerous popular articles.