The OSU Marine Mammal Institute integrates research, education, and outreach to advance our knowledge of marine mammals, train the next generation of professionals, and engage with stakeholders to ensure that these animals and their ecosystems are always healthy.
Whales are big, dynamic, and spend most of their lives under water — factors that challenge our ability to study their ecology, health, and behavior. Drones, or Unoccupied Aerial Systems (UAS), are helping us overcome some of these challenges by offering a new, and noninvasive, perspective on the lives and world of whales. Over the last six years, the GEMM Lab has developed new methods, applications, and knowledge based on the use drones to study marine mammals, including documenting new whale foraging behaviors, understanding how krill respond to whale predation, and the relationship between whale body condition and environmental conditions. For more information, check out the Drone-based Innovative Assessments of Megafauna Offer New Discoveries (DIAMOND) project.
The Whale Habitat, Ecology, and Telemetry Laboratory focuses on studying whale movements and their relationship to their complex and changing environments.
The Cetacean Conservation and Genomics Laboratory explores the genomes of whales and dolphins to understand the past, assess the present, and conserve the future.
The Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Laboratory focuses on the ecology, behavior and conservation of marine megafauna including cetaceans, pinnipeds, seabirds, and sharks.
The Oregon Marine Mammal Stranding Network documents occurrences and investigates the causes of marine mammal strandings in Oregon. Learn what to do if you find a marine mammal ashore.
MMI Associate Professor Daniel Palacios coauthored a paper released this week that evaluates the global threats faced by 126 marine mammal species worldwide and the conservation methods available to address them.
A new paper by MMI Affiliate Rachael Orben and MMI Associate Professor Leigh Torres describes a new method of analyzing encounters between albatross and commercial fishing vessels.
