Raquel Gaspar

Raquel Gaspar is a 49-year-old passionate marine biologist that aims to empower women from fishing communities in seagrass meadows conservation.
Her story started with a TV programme. When she was around 15, she watched Jacques Cousteau’s Sunday TV programmes. She grew up dreaming to be able to dive and study marine life and she did it! She had the privilege to work onboard of research sailing vessels to study whales and dolphins. In her PhD she studied the bottlenose dolphin resident population in the Sado estuary. It was then she realise that her work needed to have impact: only by changing people’s behaviours could she help save that very small dolphin population. This led her to be the co-founder of Ocean Alive developing women leadership in ocean conservation. Raquel likes to be a story teller. She uses this skill to promote ocean literacy and to engage teachers and young people in caring about the ocean. She is author of a few children’s books about the marine life. Raquel received the Terre de Femmes 2017 Portuguese Award. As an entrepreneur, she is a fellow of the Ariane Rothschild fellowship since 2015. This year she received a National Geographic Explorer Grant