Remembering Mel Cosentino.

 

Remembering Mel Cosentino.

Mel (Andrea) Cosentino PhD passed away on July 29th, 2025, at the Søholm Hospice, Aarhus in Denmark after a complicated battle with leukemia. 

 A few weeks before Mel died, but at a point that she knew her death was imminent, she asked me to write a ‘cheeky eulogy' about her when she was gone. So here I try to honour her request. In the interim, I also provided some text to the IWC so that it could issue one of its sad 'in memorium' notices for her. I draw here on that notice and also on the very lovely missive that her friends at Aarhus University published on their website. Various of our mutual friends have also helped with these words and the document remains open for improvement.

Mel Cosentino’s life was a truly remarkable one! She was born and grew up in Argentina and whilst her origins might be described as modest, her intense interest in nature was nurtured in Patagonia, including her life-long love for orcas, a species that she first met there. I am told that she took her chosen name (she was originally named Andrea) because there was a famous Patagonian orca known as Mel.

 I first got to know her in the fringes of the IWC Scientific Committee (SC) and at the annual conferences of the European Cetacean Society and in both these places she was always an enthusiastic contributor. I don’t recall precisely when we first met but in those now distant days, she was a brave mixture of shyness and enthusiasm, and she made friends easily and we shared a little social circle (you know who you are).

 Curiously, Mel attended SC meetings as a member of the Luxembourg delegation. To understand how this came about, we need to go back to when she and her then husband left Argentina at a time when it was suffering a severe economic blight. The couple first went to Ireland, and worked as farm hands there, moving on to Spain. Here Mel restarted her undergraduate studies at the University of Malaga and further polished her language skills. She also went to help with the Tarifa orca project in the Gibraltar Straits. Here she met Pierre Gallego and it was later Pierre – as the lead for Luxembourg in the SC - who brought her into its meetings.

 Whilst not attending such meetings, Mel roamed all over the world acting as a researcher/naturalist on many expeditions and building a big international gang of friends. Her travels included Norway where she was again able to see her beloved orcas/

 Mel attended SC meetings in the period from 2012 until 2022 and made many contributions, submitting papers across a diverse range of topics, including co-authoring papers concerning bycatch, the effects of whale watching, aquatic wild meat and noise pollution. 

 Her determination to work in the cetacean field saw her complete a master’s degree in Aberdeen, then she studied for a PhD at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland. Somewhere along the way she collaborated on a really remarkable paper that provides an account of a solitary common dolphin that lived in the Firth of Clyde for a number of years and the harbour porpoises that it interacted with there.  The paper is available HERE.

 During the difficult years of the COVID lock-downs, she joined various virtual meetings and knitted wonderful little dragons that she sent to friends to bring some cheer. I don’t know why she chose dragons but they came in many bright colours.

 After she received her PhD in 2020, she moved to Denmark and the Department of Ecoscience at Aarhus University. Here she really found her happy place with her partner, Henrik. At the time of her death, she was working as a Postdoc on a project about acoustic communication in porpoises. It their lovely tribute to her published on the University website, her colleagues at Aarhus commented that ‘among her most significant scientific contributions is the best software ever developed for identification and classification of porpoise sounds in underwater recordings and impressive syntheses and results based on data collected by herself and countless other volunteers on whale safari boats and other platforms from many parts of the world, including Andenes, Norway.’

 In the months that preceded her death the battle with the disease was a terrible roller-coaster. In fact, not so long ago she was in recovery and looking forward to returning to a normal life. But the disease then resurged, and she was then told she only had weeks to live. I cannot imagine how difficult this must have been for her and for Henrik. Right up until the end she was still messaging her friends and thinking of them and their needs. She asked us all to celebrate her in our own way.

 Those of us who had the privilege of knowing her across the decades, saw her grow from an enthusiastic and determined student into an increasingly significant and passionate scientific contributor across a range of topics focused on cetacean conservation. A few days after her death a new paper on orcas and sperm whales (another story of unusual interactions) with her as the first author was published. You can find it HERE and all her other published contributions remain as a shining testimony to the breadth and quality of her work on her researchgate pages.

 Mel was a very warm and kind person, generous to her friends, blessed with a big smile and an infectious laugh. She held strong views, especially on matters where she saw injustice, and was a champion for younger researchers and women in science. Here are comments from a couple of her close friends:

 Rob Lott who has known her since her Tarifa days noted this “Mel was a friend to everyone and had a remarkable way of making you feel at ease with her quiet and warm personality. I remember her steely ambition too, after recently arriving in Europe and taking every opportunity to practice her English.”

 Pierre Gallego, also a friend of more than 20 years adds this ‘She is the best example I know that if you work hard enough, you can achieve any goal you set.’

 While we can all agree that she was taken from us too soon, she achieved much, and her remarkable life story shows that hard work in pursuit of your heart’s desire can pay off.

 The whales, dolphins and porpoises have lost a great ally but, if they could, they would surely thank her being one of their great champions.

 Heartfelt condolences to all her friends and family, including Henrik, her partner,

 

 This is your ‘cheeky eulogy’ Mel, I hope it is something close to what you wanted.

 

Mel (second left) and some other IWC SC colleagues a few years ago.

Corrections, additions and comments can be sent to me and if you would like to add some words to this, please let me know. I have borrowed a couple of pictures from her Facebook page here. I don’t know who took them but if this causes any concerns, please let me know.