“Pacific Travelers,” a documentary in Spanish produced by Albatros Media and directed by Alejandro Balaguer, recently won first prize in the National Wildlife Conservation Film Festival in the Foreign Film category.
The awarded film features Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute marine biologist Héctor M. Guzman diving with a group of five whale sharks while traveling in the Tropical Eastern Pacific. In the video, Guzmán tags a radiotransmitter to one of the sharks in order to follow its voyages.
Guzmán studies the ecology and population dynamics of coral reefs; taxonomy of corals, conservation biology; human impacts on marine ecosystems, coastal management, fisheries and marine pollution. He currently works on migratory patterns of large deep-water species in the Eastern Pacific, shark fishery, and marine reserves networking. Guzmán leads STRI´s reef monitoring network of 33 sites along the Isthmus of Panama, implemented over a decade ago with partial funding by Nature Conservancy.
