Exploring Lives in the Sea
Born in Sri Lanka in 1979, Asha de Vos is a renowned marine biologist. The age of Asha de Vos is 43 years. She is also a noted ocean educator, and a pioneer of long-term blue whale research within the vast liquid realm of northern Indian Ocean. A Senior TED Fellow, she has attracted fame for The Sri Lankan Blue Whale Project.
The Potent Dream and Education
Her fascination with sea began early. She began dreaming of becoming an adventurer-scientist as a six-year-old, while poring over the second-hand issues of National Geographic which her parents would bring to her. Slowly those dreams coalesced into an ambition to become a marine biologist.
She began her academic journey from Ladies College, Colombo (the name may sound confusing for it is a private girls’ school located in Colombo, Sri Lanka), which was followed by her education at Colombo International School. After that she went to Scotland for her undergraduate studies in marine and environmental biology with the University of St. Andrews.
While talking about her we can come to know that after doing her Bsc(Hons) in marine and environmental biology in 2002, she earned her masters degree in integrative bio-science from the University of Oxford in 2004. Thereafter she went on to earn a PhD from the University of Western Australia, thereby becoming the only Sri Lankan to have a PhD in marine mammal research.
Pioneer and Researcher
As a marine biologist she has many achievements to her credit.She had served as a Senior Programme Officer in the marine and coastal unit of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Asha de Vos, who had the distinction of being a post-doctoral scholar at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is the Founder of Oceanswell; a non-profit which is Sri Lanka’s first marine conservation research and education organization. This achievement of hers needs to be highlighted in a biography of Asha de Vos.
She is also the first National Geographic Explorer from Sri Lanka. Her work has attracted widespread media coverage, which include BBC, the New York Times, and National Geographic among others.
In 2008, when she just 29, she founded The Sri Lankan Blue Whale Project, which can be described as the first long-term study on blue whales within the northern Indian Ocean.
As a result of her research, the International Whaling Commission has classified Sri Lankan blue whales as a species in urgent need of conservation research and has begun collaborating with the Sri Lankan government on whale ship-strikes.
In 2018, she was chosen among the BBC 100 Women list of most inspiring and influential women from around our planet. In 2015, she became a Marine Conservation Action Fund (MCAF) Fellow and in the next year she became a Pew Marine Fellow.
For those who are interested in knowing the net worth of Asha de Vos, it might be interesting to know that according to https://wikitrusted.com/asha-de-vos-wikipedia/, the net worth of Asha de Vos in 2021 did lie in the range of 1 to 5 million USD.
FAQs
She began her career as a marine biologist in 2005 when she became a Senior Programme Officer in the marine and coastal unit of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The marine biologist is very much known for The Sri Lankan Blue Whale Project and Oceanswell.
There is no authentic information in public domain about her marital status.
