Biography

Dr Rob Williams is a researcher in UBC’s Marine Mammal Research Unit who conducts applied conservation research projects on a number of marine mammal populations around the world.  He completed his Ph.D at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, with an emphasis on cost-effective cetacean research projects, such as small-boat or platform-of-opportunity surveys.  His MSc work (on behavioural responses of killer whales to whalewatching boats) was conducted with MMRU in 1999.  His main geographic areas of interest are the coastal waters of BC and the Southern Ocean. 

Rob is the 2009-10 Canada-US Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in University of Washington's Jackson School of International Studies. His research focus is transboundary issues in marine mammal conservation, with special emphasis on killer whales, wild salmon and shipping noise.

Rob’s work addresses two broad themes:  estimating wildlife abundance and distribution; and assessing impacts of human activities on behaviour and energetics of marine mammals.  Prior to re-joining MMRU in 2007, Rob and his colleagues designed (Thomas, Williams and Sandilands 2007) and conducted (Williams and Thomas 2007) systematic surveys to estimate the number of cetaceans found in BC’s Inside Passage waters.  Since then, he has initiated a number of studies to use these data to conduct quantitative assessments of the risk to marine mammal populations of anthropogenic activities, such as bycatch in commercial fisheries, ship strikes, and ingestion of and entanglement in floating marine debris.  In 2008, he and his colleagues started a partnership with Cornell University to measure ambient (anthropogenic) noise in BC coastal waters. 

He has been a member of the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission since 2001.  Rob reviews for a number of scientific journals, and serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Zoology and Animal Conservation. 

Publications :

Articles published or accepted in refereed journals;

Rob Williams and Len Thomas. Cost-effective abundance estimation of rare animals: Testing performance of small-boat surveys for killer whales in British Columbia. Biological Conservation 142:1542-1547. (PDF)

Rob Williams and Dawn Noren. (2009) Swimming speed, respiration rate and estimated cost of transport in killer whales. Marine Mammal Science 25:327-350. (PDF)

Rob Williams, David Lusseau and Phil Hammond. (2009) The role of social aggregations and protected areas in killer whale conservation: the mixed blessing of critical habitat. Biological Conservation 142:709-719. (PDF)

Rob Williams*, David Bain, David Lusseau and Jodi Smith. (2009) Effects of vessel traffic on behaviour patterns of individual southern resident killer whales (Orcinus orca). Endangered Species Research 6:199-209. (* - Joint first-authorship.) (PDF)

David Lusseau, David Bain, Rob Williams and Jodi Smith. (2009) Vessel traffic disrupts foraging behaviour of southern resident killer whales. Endangered Species Research 6:211-221. (PDF)

Rob Williams, Anna Hall and Arliss Winship. (2008) Potential limits to anthropogenic mortality of small cetaceans in coastal waters of British Columbia. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 65(9):1867-1878. [PDF]

Rob Williams and Len Thomas. (2007) Distribution and abundance of marine mammals in the coastal waters of BC, Canada. Journal of Cetacean Research and Management 9(1):  15-28.  [PDF]

Len Thomas, Rob Williams and Doug Sandilands. (2007) Designing line transect surveys for complex survey regions.Journal of Cetacean Research and Management 9(1):  1-13. [PDF]

Williams, R., Leaper, R., Zerbini, A. and Hammond, P.S. (2007) Methods for investigating measurement error in cetacean line transect surveys. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 87:  313-320.  [PDF]

Rob Williams and Erin Ashe. (2007) Killer whale evasive tactics vary with boat number. Journal of Zoology (London) 272(4):  390-397.  [PDF]

Rob Williams and Kim Crosbie. (2007) Antarctic whales and Antarctic tourism. Tourism in Marine Environments (Special Issue on Polar Tourism).  [PDF]

Rob Williams and David Lusseau. (2006) A killer whale social network is vulnerable to targeted removals. Biology Letters 2(4):  497-500.  [PDF]

Rob Williams, Sharon Hedley and Phil Hammond. (2006) Modelling distribution and abundance of Antarctic baleen whales using ships of opportunity.  Ecology and Society 11(1). http://ecologyandsociety.org/vol11/iss1/art1/

Rob Williams, David Lusseau and Phil Hammond. (2006) Estimating relative energetic costs of human disturbance to killer whales (Orcinus orca). Biological Conservation 133(3):  301-311.   [PDF]

Alexandra Morton and Rob Williams. (2006) Response of Sea Lice infestation on wild Pink and Chum Salmon smolts to arrival of parasitized wild adult salmon. Canadian Field-Naturalist 120(2):  199-204.  [ABSTRACT:  PDF]

Alexandra Morton, Rick Routledge and Rob Williams. (2005) Temporal patterns of sea louse infestation on wild Pacific salmon in relation to the fallowing of Atlantic salmon farms. North American Journal of Fisheries Management 25: 811-821.  [PDF]

David Lusseau, Rob Williams, Ben Wilson, Kate Grellier, Tim Barton, Phil Hammond and Paul Thompson. (2004) Parallel influence of climate on the behaviour of Pacific killer whales and Atlantic bottlenose dolphins. Ecology Letters 7: 1068-1076.  [PDF]

Meike Scheidat, Cristina Castro, Janira Gonzalez and Rob Williams. (2004) Behavioural responses of humpback whales to whalewatching boats near Isla de la Plata, Machalilla National Park, Ecuador. Journal of Cetacean Research and Management 6(1): 63-68. [PDF]

Alexandra Morton and Rob Williams. (2003). First report of the sea louse, Lepeophtheirus salmonis, infestation on juvenile Pink Salmon, Oncorhynchus gorbuscha, in nearshore habitat.  Canadian Field-Naturalist 117: 634-641. [ABSTRACT:  morton_williams_2003_CFN.txt]

Rob Williams, David Bain, John Ford and Andrew Trites. (2002) Behavioural responses of male killer whales to a ‘leapfrogging’ vessel. Journal of Cetacean Research and Management 4(3): 305-310.  [PDF]

Rob Williams, Andrew Trites and David Bain. (2002) Behavioural responses of killer whales to whale-watching traffic: opportunistic observations and experimental approaches. Journal of Zoology (London) 256: 255-270.  [PDF]

Papers in press;

Erin Ashe, Dawn Noren and Rob Williams. In press. Animal behaviour and marine protected areas: incorporating behavioural data into the selection of marine protected areas for an endangered killer whale population. Animal Conservation. DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-1795.2009.00321.x  

Rob Williams and Patrick O’Hara. In press. Modelling ship strike risk to fin, humpback and killer whales in British Columbia, Canada. Journal of Cetacean Research and Management. [PDF]

1. Other refereed contributions;

Rob Williams and Greg Donovan.  Blue whales. In:  Riffenburgh, B. (ed.) Encyclopedia of the Antarctic, Routledge, New York, 1248 pp.  

Rob Williams and Greg Donovan.  Fin whales. In:  Riffenburgh, B. (ed.) Encyclopedia of the Antarctic, Routledge, New York, 1248 pp.  

Rob Williams and Greg Donovan.  Sei whales. In:  Riffenburgh, B. (ed.) Encyclopedia of the Antarctic, Routledge, New York, 1248 pp.