Eleanor Yeld Hutchings

Dr Eleanor Yeld-Hutchings currently works for the Save Our Seas Foundation, managing the Shark Education Centre in Kalk Bay, South Africa. She is also the specialist marine biologist presenter for the award-winning South African television documentary series Shoreline, which has just completed its second season exploring the coast of South Africa.

Eleanor gained her PhD from the Marine Biology Research Centre, University of Cape Town. Her research was on the parasites of a number of endemic South African shark species, focusing on the discovery and description of several species new to science, the transmission of blood parasites and the ecology of parasite communities with potential for application in the assessment of fisheries stock.

Demonstrating a special affinity for connecting civil society with the marine environment, Eleanor in the past has managed WWF-South Africa’s People and the Coast programme and, with a tourist guide certificate for marine and coastal tourism, has run a specialist company guiding tours of the marine environment. She is a qualified scuba diver (both commercial and PADI Rescue level) and dive/boat skipper, and she is kept level-headed by trail-running in the Table Mountain National Park. She lives with her husband and son in the seaside village of Kommetjie.