Miriam Marmontel is an oceanographer at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul with an MSc in Marine Biology from the University of Miami and a PhD in Wildlife Conservation from the University of Florida, in Gainesville.





Twenty years ago she turned her attention to freshwater mammals, and has been working with the five Amazonian genera (manatees, giant otters, Neotropical otters, pink and tucuxi dolphins) since then. She has since lived and worked in Tefé, Amazonas state, Brazil, where she is a researcher with the Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development, and leads a research group on Amazonian aquatic mammals, working in the Mamirauá and Amanã sustainable development reserves.





In the early 2000s she spent some time in the Brazilian Pantanal, working with giant river otters, and then started a research program on giant otters in the Amanã Reserve.