Marilyn Dunlap

Marilyn Dunlap came to Hawaiʻi from California in 1968 to be a graduate student in Zoology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. After earning her Ph.D. in Zoology in 1975, she joined the faculty of the Pacific Biosciences Research Center of UHM where she serves as Associate Director of the unit and directs a core microscopy facility. Her own research dealt with marine sea slugs. Her interest in Hawaiian monk seals started in 2001 when a female seal, nicknamed “LuSeal,” hauled out at Sandy Beach. Since that time, she has spent most of her weekends and holidays monitoring seals around Oʻahu and supported the almost full-time citizen science studies of Hawaiian monk seals conducted by her late husband DB Dunlap until he died in 2017.