Sebastien Blanchard

Team Member

Sebastien was born in Quebec’s agropolis and earned his B.S. in Biology from Sherbrooke university in 2021.  He has a variety of vertebrate research interests and was a MICS intern in 2021.  He has traveled extensively to Senegal, and throughout South-East Asia and the Americas.  In 2018 during a hike at Fitzroy mountain (Argentinian Patagonia), he decided to leave his job and return to school to study biology.  In 2020, he then completed an internship in Mexico with the CONAMP (Comisión Nacional de Àreas Naturales Protegidas) where he assisted with tapir and jaguar field research. This experience made him realize that fieldwork with large mammals was becoming a passion.  He now returns as a team member at MICS and is excited to continue studying the largest animals on earth.     

Sebastien’s specific research questions include behavior and conservation of marine mammals. He is a new drone pilot and is hoping to collect aerial data that will provide new perspectives on rorqual whale behavioral patterns. When off the water, he enjoys educating museum visitors about whale biology.  These discussions allow him to raise people’s awareness about the ecology, biodiversity, and conservation problems of the St. Lawrence ecosystem.  Sebastien is also an experienced brewer  (Brasseur du Monde, Refuge des Brasseurs and Saint-Houblon) and, in 2018 with some friends, founded BierePop, a non-profit brewery organization that developed collaborative beer programs to help fund local community NGOs.