Flex was first photo-identified off Sakhalin Island as a calf in 1997 and has subsequently been observed in multiple years off Sakhalin during the summer feeding season. To better understand his movements, photo-identification images of Flex were compared with a photo catalog of over 1000 eastern gray whales, which revealed a match.
Newport, Oregon – One of the world's top whale researchers is keeping track of a genetically distinct and rare whale that has wandered from the waters of Russia to the Oregon coast recently. Meanwhile, some pods of Killer Whales have been spotted marauding around these waters as well (above: Flex photographed near Russia).
Associate Director Scott Baker and Research Assistant Debbie Steel are in Apia, Samoa for a meeting of the South Pacific Whale Research Consortium, hosted by the South Pacific Regional Environment Progamme (SPREP).The Consortium includes 36 independent researchers active in 10 Pacific Island ...
On Saturday evening, May 22, the Oregon Marine Mammal Stranding Network received a report from the U.S. Coast Guard of a decomposed whale carcass that had been sighted by helicopter about a mile offshore from Waldport. The following morning the carcass was sighted on the beach just north of Beachside State Park.
Members of the stranding network responded and found a 40 foot male gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) in an advanced state of decomposition. Photographs and measurements were collected and limited sampling of...
On Thursday May 20, a team from the Marine Mammal Institute was able to successfully remove a plastic packing band that had been wrapped around the neck of an adult male California sea lion. This was our first attempt at removing debris from a sea lion on a beach.
We've also recently been successful with desentanglement efforts on a Steller sea lion at Sea Lion Caves and at our recently deployed disentanglement capture cage at the Bayfront in Newport.
Unfortunately, packing band entanglements are increasingly common with sea lions along the West Coast. These plastic strips are used in the packaging of many products, particularly frozen fish used for bait, and end up...
Scott Baker had no idea that when he agreed to participate in the making of The Cove, a documentary about a dolphin slaughter in Japan, that the movie would win an Academy Award.
When Ocean Power Technologies floats its first 200-ton wave energy-generating buoy off the Oregon Coast this year, it wants to be sure the device doesn’t disturb the coast’s most frequent multi-ton visitors: gray whales.
Markus Horning was this month's lecturer at Corvallis' Science Pub - a monthly gathering for the community to interact with OSU scientists on a variety of topics. This topic was "Consummate and Consumed Predators: Threats to Seals & Sea Lions in a Changing Ocean”.
In October 2009, a man and two women walked into a renowned Los Angeles restaurant called The Hump and ordered some sushi. This seemingly innocuous act was the start of a fascinating chain of events that would involve hidden cameras, genetic sequencing, a few arrests, and the first solid proof of an illegal international trade in whale meat.
An international team of Oregon State University scientists, documentary filmmakers and environmental advocates has uncovered an apparent illegal trade in whalemeat, linking whales killed in Japan’s controversial scientific whaling program to sushi restaurants in Seoul, South Korea, and Los Angeles, Calif.
On Wednesday March 31, 2010 we had our first opportunity to put our new Sea Lion Disentanglement Cage to good use.
You can follow these links for the story:
A crew from the Pinniped Ecology Applied Research Laboratory (PEARL) with OSU's Marine Mammal Institute is helping the North Coast Marine Mammal Center (http://www.northcoastmmc.org/index.php) track a young female Steller sea lion who was released from the rehabilitation facility in Crescent City, CA on Saturday, March 27. Markus Horning and interns Julia Hager, Stephen Meck and Jennifer Olson glued a satellite transmitter to the fur on the animals' head using 5-minute epoxy. The transmitter allows researchers to track the sea lion's location on a daily basis. The device is expected to fall off by the annual molt in August.
This is the first time a...
Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal and Marine Genomics Building got a boost from the Oregon Legislature, which dedicated $9 million in state money to the $25 million project. Gov. Ted Kulongoski signed House Bill 3643 into law last week.
A sub-adult Steller sea lion was successfully disentangled from a trawl net at Sea Lion Caves on Thursday March18. Click HERE for details.
A custom-built capture cage has been deployed at Newport's Port Dock 1 to address this problem of sea lion entanglement. The cage is basically a modified floating dock enclosed on four sides by a galvanized steel structure, with sliding doors on two sides. It is designed primarily to serve as an additional haul out area for sea lions to use freely, with its doors locked in the open position so animals can comfortably come and go as they choose.
For several months this past fall and winter, thousands of California sea lions (Zalophus californianus) assembled on and just offshore of a remote beach just to the south of Heceta Head on the central Oregon coast. It is unknown specifically what attracted so many of these animals to this site, although it is clear that enormous amounts of prey fish (possibly herring, squid, hake, sardine or anchovies) must have been available to support such huge numbers of sea lions. This area is also home to several hundred Steller sea lions (Eumetopias jubatus), which use nearby Sea Lion Caves as a regular haul out.
A pioneering project that implants life-long monitors inside of Steller sea lions to learn more about why the number of these endangered marine mammals has been declining – and remains low in Alaska – is beginning to provide data, and the results are surprising to scientists.
On Thursday, April 9, 2009, a fresh dead adult female gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) was found on the beach at Washburn State Park, just north of Heceta Head. She was extremely emaciated, and there was no evident trauma to the body. Her posture, lying belly-down flat on the sand, suggests that she died on the beach or in shallow water soon before she was reported to the stranding network. We suspect the immediate cause of death was starvation.
View map of the stranding location
A necropsy was conducted...
A National Geographic Channel film, “Kingdom of the Blue Whale, premiered on Sunday, March 8 with more airings listed on their website. This program offers some of the most revealingviews of the largest animal on the planet through the work of OregonState University’s Bruce Mate and colleague John Calambokidis ofCascadia Research Cooperative...
See the MMI photo gallery for this trip
