Marine Mammal Institute

The Cormorant Oceanography Project, led by MMI Affiliate Rachael Orben, features in this article about the effort to track a dwindling population of shags (cormorants) in New Zealand’s Hauraki Gulf. 

Scott Baker and Debbie Steel are long-term collaborators on genetic studies of endangered Hector’s and Maui dolphins in New Zealand.

Robert Cowen, the longtime director of Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, is retiring at the end of the month. He will be replaced on an interim basis by Lisa Ballance, director of the center’s Marine Mammal Institute. 

Leigh Torres has studied gray whales off the coast of Oregon since 2015 and says that the animals are not monogamous but live in a type of reproductive system known as sperm competition. “The males experience high levels of testosterone that helps them compete against one another to reproduce." 

Kate Stafford, a researcher at the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University who studies bowheads using acoustic monitoring, has worked on the past five bowhead censuses. “This combination of methods makes for a more robust population estimate and confirms what Native whalers have always known – that whales migrate in heavy ice, sometimes far offshore and at all times of the day.”

Gray whales are dying by the thousands, victims of declines in Arctic sea ice. “We know the link,” Josh Stewart said. “We know that these populations are fluctuating in response to Arctic conditions and prey availability, and we know that that’s in decline because of warming, and we know that that warming is caused by humans."

Research Associate Clarissa Teixeira analyzes the baleen plates of Arctic bowhead whales to understand the whales' prey choices over time. Professor Kate Stafford incorporates data from indigenous communities to understand how bowhead and humpback whale movements are changing as Arctic ice conditions change.

Evidence collected from a recent research project suggests the world’s largest animals — blue whales — are successfully breeding off the Taranaki coast, but their future is under threat from climate change. Scientists from Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute spent three weeks at sea, studying the impacts of climate change on blue whales and krill in the South Taranaki Bight as part of the SAPPHIRE Project.

A warming environment is driving changes in the migration patterns of some fish and whale species. Clarissa Teixeira and Kate Stafford study the diets and movements of Arctic bowhead whales and how they are being affected by the changing climate.