Rayne grew up in South Florida and was enamored with marine mammals from a young age. She moved to San Juan Island, Washington, in early 2018 and began working in killer whale ecotourism. She served as one of the inaugural volunteers at the Center for Whale Research's Orca Survey Center, an educational space dedicated to educating the public about the Southern Resident killer whales. In 2019, she began attending the University of Alaska Southeast, where she completed an interdisciplinary degree that combined courses from UAS' Marine Biology program and Program on the Environment. She is currently pursuing an MMP from UAF and lives in Seattle, Washington.

• Center for Whale Research

• Marine Mammal Behavior
• Passive Acoustic Monitoring
• GIS and Geographical Analysis
• Whale Watching and Ecotourism
• Human-Environment Relations

As an undergraduate student at the University of Alaska Southeast, I worked with Dr. Heidi Pearson to study the behavior of local humpback whale and killer whale populations in Juneau, Alaska. I created a catalogue of regularly seen killer whales in the Juneau area and conducted GIS analysis to identify spatiotemporal trends in resident killer whale presence. In spring 2023, I received funding to deploy a hydrophone from several sites to detect killer whale presence in order to further determine habitat use patterns from resident killer whales in Juneau. In April 2023, I conducted an undergraduate thesis project focused on the story of Luna/Tsux'iit (L98), a Southern Resident killer whale who became separated from L pod for several years. My thesis combined research in marine mammal behavior, human-environment interactions, and marine policy to analyze the shortcomings in the Western scientific response to Luna/Tsux'iit's story. Currently, I am working with the Center for Whale Research in Friday Harbor, Washington, to continue my use of passive acoustic monitoring to study resident killer whale behavior and social relations.

• Rising Undergraduates in Mammalogy, awarded by American Society of Mammalogists, 2023
• URECA Creative Research Grant, 2023
• Biomedical Learning and Student Training Research Grant, 2023
• Preparing Coastal Alaskan Students Research Funding, 2022
• Biomedical Learning and Student Training Research Grant, 2022
• URECA Creative Research Grant, 2021
• Sustainability in Higher Education Travel Award, 2017