Marine Mammal Institute

The Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory at UC Santa Barbara, along with a consortium of research and conservation institutions including MMI, have recently launched Whale Safe for the San Francisco Bay region. Whale Safe is a technology-based mapping and analysis tool designed to prevent fatal ship collisions with whales. The tool includes predictions of habitat suitability for blue whales that were developed using MMI's tracking data and oceanographic conditions. WHET Lab participants include Daniel Palacios, Ladd Irvine, and Bruce Mate.

Press release for our recent paper documenting the development of the "RDW tag," a new smart tag for long-term monitoring of whale behavior, including previously unobservable feeding events during dives. The effort was led by Daniel Palacios, and includes Ladd Irvine, Barb Lagerquist, and Bruce Mate as MMI co-authors.

Our recent paper in Animal Biotelemetry by Palacios et al. (2022) documents the development of the "RDW tag", a new electronic device for monitoring whale behavior that we co-developed in partnership with manufacturer Telonics. The capabilities of the RDW tag are illustrated in the graphical abstract above (created by lab member Clarissa Teixeira), in comparison to the "location-only tag" that had been our primary device for tracking whale movement and migration. The main points of the paper are:

• Until now, technological limitations have prevented long-term tracking of whale...

The seal, a male yearling, was found stranded on Salishan Beach and reported by a private citizen to Jim Rice, Stranding Program manager with the Marine Mammal Institute. Rice and Research Assistant Charles Nye responded to the call.

Once a year for two months, the cacophony of barking coming from the Newport Sea Lion Docks falls silent. “They will probably be absent from the Yaquina Bay and most of the Oregon coast from early June to late July,” said Jim Rice, Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Stranding Program manager.

“All these sightings over the past month have been pretty exciting,” Leigh Torres said. “And what’s especially cool here is that you can view them from the shore pretty easily.”

A video has been released showcasing the work of MMI affiliate Angie Sremba and Bob Dziak, who use eDNA and acoustics to study blue whales off the Oregon coast.

Lisa T. Ballance will be the keynote speaker at HMSC Marine Science Day on April 9.

“These are big animals,” says Lisa Ballance, director of Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute. “They’re not planktonic organisms, and we just know next to nothing about them.”