Theresa Soley

When not on the water, Theresa may be found in the mountains surrounding her home in Juneau, Alaska. She settled on Douglas Island after years of wandering to places like Equatorial Guinea on the west coast of Central Africa, where she was a research assistant for leatherback sea turtle and drill primate studies, and into the Andes mountains where she investigated freshwater fish issues in graduate school. Theresa has worked as a guide and naturalist in Alaska since 2011. She was raised in Wisconsin and completed her master's degree there in 2017.

In the guiding off-season, Theresa writes for magazines and is on the editorial team of a literary journal called Alaska Women Speak. Her academic interests include climate, the north, ecosystem change, food systems, and the complex relations between humans and the natural world.

Theresa's outdoor pursuits include downhill and cross-country skiing, sea kayaking, alpine running, and climbing. She is also slowly planning a paddling trip in the Napo River, beginning in Ecuador and ending in Peru, where she will go in search of Amazonian pink river dolphins.

At the conclusion of her first summer in Alaska, Theresa cried in a kayak while watching humpback whales outside of Sitka. She became so fascinated by them that she conducted her master's thesis about humans' perceptions of whales, and the environment. She will tell you all about this research, and other marine mammals, when you meet her on board Lindblad-National Geographic ships. Visit her website: http://theresaesoley.weebly.com/ to learn more about her work and interests.