Mike Donoghue is a Senior International Relations Officer (Marine) with the New Zealand Department of Conservation (DOC). He holds an M.Sc. in Oceanography from Southampton University, and is the Scientific Adviser to New Zealand’s Commissioner to the International Whaling Commission.

Prior to joining DOC. in 1987, he spent eight years as a self-employed longline fisherman in the Hauraki Gulf, near Auckland. He has published several articles on interactions between marine mammals and fisheries in New Zealand. Mike has provided policy advice since 1987 to successive Ministers of Conservation on conservation and protection of endemic New Zealand marine mammals, particularly Hector’s dolphin and New Zealand (Hooker’s) sea lion.

He has published several articles on interactions between marine mammals and fisheries in New Zealand and has provided policy advice since 1987 to successive Ministers of Conservation on conservation and protection of endemic New Zealand marine mammals, particularly Hector's dolphin and New Zealand (Hooker's) sea lion. He was largely responsible for establishing the Conservation Services Levies programme in New Zealand, through which fishers pay the costs of research and implementation of projects to avoid, remedy and mitigate the impacts of commercial fishing on marine protected species.

As well as leading a humpback whale research programme in Tonga, Mike also co-ordinates the activities of the South Pacific Whale Research Consortium, which brings together biologists studying whales in eastern Australia, New Caledonia, Tonga, the Cook Islands, French Polynesia, Chile and Colombia. Other work in the Pacific region has included assisting the governments of the Cook Islands and Samoa to draft legislation establishing whale sanctuaries in their waters and attendance at the 2001 Regional Forum to progress a South Pacific Whale Sanctuary. Mike is a Board member of the Marine Conservation Action Fund.