Marine Mammal Institute

We are pleased to congratulate Ellie Bors on receiving a Fulbright Arctic Initiative Scholar award. Dr. Bors is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Cetacean Conservation and Genomics Laboratory at the OSU Marine Mammal Institute, where she is developing molecular methods to age Cook Inlet beluga whales. Her Fulbright Arctic Initiative project will explore both the biological and policy implications of shifting distributions of Arctic fish stocks. In 2017, Ellie was a Sea Grant Knauss Marine Policy Fellow in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of International Affairs in Washington, DC. She completed her PhD in the MIT-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in Oceanography.

For the past two-plus years, the carcass of a 78-foot blue whale that washed ashore near Gold Beach, Oregon, in November 2015 has been submerged in Yaquina Bay allowing nature to run its course by having scavengers clean the bones. The cleansing process is nearly complete, according to researchers with the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University, who hope to bring the skeleton to the surface and treat it with chemicals to get oil out of the bones. Eventually, they hope to display it for the public as an educational exhibit at the new Marine Studies Building that OSU will open in late 2019 on the Hatfield Marine Science Center campus in Newport.

A new blog by veterinarian Dr. Lauren Jacobsen describes the adventure of searching for the source of elusive beaked whale vocalizations. Extracting eDNA from seawater offers an opportunity to collect biologic information from the animal generating these calls. The samples are being analyzed by Dr. Scott Baker and his team at the Cetacean Conservation and Genomics Lab at Oregon State University.

The Cetacean Conservation and Genomics Laboratory, led by Dr. Scott Baker, is seeking a postdoctoral scholar to specialize in epigenetic aging of beluga whales by next-generation sequencing. Apply by December 1, 2017, for full consideration.

Oregonians may now purchase a voucher for a new license plate featuring a gray whale and her calf, with proceeds going to support the Oregon State University Marine Mammal Institute. The voucher can be purchased for $40 through the institute at whaleplate.com. Once 3,000 vouchers have been sold, the Oregon DMV will begin manufacturing the plates. The OSU Marine Mammal Institute will receive $35 for each pair of license plates sold, which will support whale research, graduate student education and public outreach.

As in past years, we are currently seeing a significant increase in the frequency of California sea lions (Zalophus californianus) appearing on Oregon beaches in varying states of health and disease. Many have been affected by Leptospirosis, a contagious bacterial infection of the kidneys. This disease causes animals to appear very lethargic and unable or unwilling to move their hind limbs, and is often accompanied by weight loss and pneumonia. While it is possible for infected animals to recover from this disease if given plenty of opportunity to rest, there is no option to rescue and rehabilitate these animals in...

Humpback whales, it seems, are coping with dwindling marine resources by moving inland. A sharp decline in the Pacific's krill (small shrimp) have them shopping for alternatives. "They're hungry," said Bruce Mate, director of the Oregon State University Marine Mammal Institute in Newport and one of the world's leading whale scientists. "They wouldn't be there if there wasn't something to eat."

“You’ve just put an instrument on the biggest animal that’s ever lived, and you got the most incredible view while doing it,” said Ari Friedlaender, a marine ecologist at Oregon State University who says he has become so proficient at tagging whales that he doesn’t even notice the boat rocking. “Afterwards there’s kind of an adrenaline rush.”

Dr. Ari Friedlaender has been in Antarctica attaching suction cup tags and cameras to humpback and minke whales to study their feeding behavior.  “We have some wonderful data on different feeding strategies..."