Miguel Gómez García

Miguel Jesús Gómez García is a Marine Biologist who graduated with honors from the Centro Universitario de la Costa Sur (CUCSUR), where he finished his thesis on the reproductive period of the flatfish Achirus mazatlanus. He has collaborated with several research and conservation programs such as the University of Guadalajara research and conservation project that focused on sea turtles, sharks and rays along the Jalisco Coast. He has been a research intern and volunteer in Proyecto Manta in the Mexican Pacific and Manta Trust in Caribbean. In 2017 he completed a research internship with Pelagios Kakunjá, and he finished his master’s degree in 2020 with a thesis about the behavioral patterns of the giant manta Mobula birostris and its relation to the interaction with divers, at the Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas del Noroeste (CIBNOR) and Pelagios Kakunjá, under the supervision of Dr. Carmen Blázquez Moreno and Dr. James Ketchum. Miguel is currently working at Pelagios Kakunjá as data manager.

Published papers:

Quantifying the effects of diver interactions on manta ray behavior at their aggregation sites