Dr. Richard Lambertsen is a veterinarian in Melbourne, Florida. He is working to develop and apply scientific arguments and evidence to foster improved conservation and management of large cetaceans. Dr. Richard Lambertsen aims to promote the health and vigor of global ecosystems, as well as maintain a key international organization for the same purpose.

Dr. Lambertsen graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor’s degree in biology, a doctor of veterinary medicine, and a doctor of philosophy in experimental hematology. He also attended a short course on marine mammalogy with the Ocean Research and Education Society, Harvard University and earned a certificate in aquatic veterinary medicine from the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell University.

Dr. Lambertsen’s skills include quantitative morphologic analysis, functional morphology, light microscopic techniques, histology, and whale biopsy methods. He is a member of the American Society of Mammalogists, the American Society of Naturalists, The Society for Marine Mammalogy, the Oceanography Society, and the Wildlife Disease Association. He also serves as a member of the Wildlife Health Specialists Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

Dr. Richard Lambertsen is working on the Veterinary Ship Initiative, an outgrowth of the AQUAVET program he helped establish in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Its goal is to develop a new class of seagoing vessels that would extend the practice of veterinary medicine to include the more than 70 percent of earth’s surface that is covered by water. The world’s first veterinary ships would operate in U.S. territorial waters.