About our team

Jamie Testa is a Faculty Research Assistant at UMCES' Chesapeake Biological Laboratory. She began working on Chesapeake DolphinWatch in 2017. She now serves as the project coordinator for Chesapeake DolphinWatch, as well as Wave of Plastic, a plastic pollution curriculum designed by and for middle school teachers in Calvert County and St. Mary's County, Maryland. Testa is also an analyst on the TailWinds project analyzing data from the real-time whale buoy off of Ocean City, Maryland. She has been living and working around Chesapeake Bay since 2005 and recently became a certified Maryland Master Naturalist. She began her work with marine mammals in 2009, when she served as the Marine Mammal and Sea Turtle Stranding Coordinator for Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

Helen Bailey, a prominent researcher studying the spatial and movement ecology of marine mammals and sea turtles, is  the founder and External Advisor to Chesapeake DolphinWatch. She is also interested in the impact of pollution on the environment and marine species. She began the Chesapeake DolphinWatch project in 2017 to understand the distribution and movements of bottlenose dolphins in the Chesapeake Bay.

Amber Fandel has been a dolphin researcher at UMCES since 2017. She uses sound (acoustic) information to understand where dolphins are, which dolphins are in the area, and what they are doing when they're here. She's also interested in environmental policy.