cetacean research news

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ACS Grant Recipient's Research Shows Connection Between Whale Entanglement, Warmer Ocean Temperatures, and Dungeness Crab Fishing

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In the last few years, the number of whales getting tangled up in fishing gear in local waters has skyrocketed. In 2016, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported 71 separate cases of whale entanglement with fishing gear on the West Coast. That is 41 more instances of whale entanglement than in 2014 and the highest annual total since the agency first started keeping track in 1982.  

Armed with 30 years of whale sighting data in the Farallon Islands, ACS San Francisco Bay Chapter research grant awardee Kaytlin Ingman set out to find out why more whales were getting caught in fishing equipment than nearly ever before.

ACS Grant Recipient’s Research Models Humpback Habitat and Shipping Lanes to Inform Strategies for Reducing Ship Strikes

Andrea Dransfield has never been inside the belly of a whale, but she did get a pretty good glimpse inside several humpback’s mouths.

As a graduate student at San Francisco State University’s Romberg Tiburon Center for Environmental Studies, Dransfield got a first-hand view of humpback whales lunge feeding right next to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) research vessel. The sighting was not only one of the most gratifying experiences of Dransfield’s research, but also it became a data point in her thesis. Between 2011 and 2012, she gathered records on oceanographic properties and humpback whale sightings during data collection cruises, adding to Point Blue Conservation Science’s extensive dataset, to create predictive models that could map out humpback whale high-use habitats and reduce the risk of whale ship strikes.

Paradise or Graveyard: The Reasons Behind Cetacean Strandings

If you were to look out at a sandy beach your first inclination might be to get the sunglasses out and let your stress melt away however beaches cam sometimes become the end-point for cetaceans when they either wash up dead or live strand. This was evidenced by one of the worst live stranding events in New Zealand’s history last month.

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Bay Area Updates From The 2016 International Cetacean Conference

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The American Cetacean Society hosted their 15th international cetacean conference in Monterey last month. The conference included a host of well-known names and a ton of interesting current research. I want to share with you some of the topics that relate to the bay area as well as some of the interesting advances in the field of cetacean science.