Dr. William E. Evans is a Professor Emeritus of the Marine Biology Department, Texas A&M University. He received his B.Sc. from Bowling Green State University, his M.Sc. from Ohio State University and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. He was director of the Sea World Research Center (San Diego, USA), Chair of the US Marine Mammal Commission, Director of the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Undersecretary of Commerce and head of NOAA. Dr. Evans - author of several hundreds papers in marine mammal acoustics, population biology, remote sensing technology and fisheries. He is Chief Editor of the American Midland Naturalist.

Dr. Alexey V. Yablokov is a chief scientist of N.K. Kol'tzoff' Institute of Developmental Biology, Russian Academy of Science. B.Sc. (Moscow State University, 1956), M.Sc. (A.N. Severtsoff' Institute of Animal Morphology, Moscow, 1959), Ph.D. (Biological Division, Siberian Branch the USSR Academy of Science, Novosibirsk, 1965). He is the author about 500 publications on mammals, populational, evolutional and conservational biology, including about 20 books, translated from Russian to English, German, Japanese etc. Dr. Yablokov is President of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy. He was President of the Moscow Society for Protection of Animals (1990-2001), and Vice President of the World Conservation Union (2000-2004).