Marine Mammal Institute

WALDPORT — Shea Steingass, a Ph.D. student at Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute, was part of a research team involved in giving area harbor seals new head decorations last week. [Read the whole story in the Newport News-Times here.]

Bruce Mate tagged his first whale 35 years ago using a primitive dart emitting a VHF signal that could be heard a whopping 5 miles away—if the weather wasn’t stormy that day. Fellow scientists thought he was a bit touched in the head for thinking a tag attached to a migrating whale would survive the saltwater pounding.

OSU PhD student Dori Dick’s presentation last week (July 16, 2014) to the Esri User Conference in San Diego was well received. Dori introduced geneGIS, a suite of computational tools for analyzing the spatial distribution and genetic relatedness of whales and dolphins. The development of the geneGIS toolbox for ArcGIS was funded by an Office of Naval Research grant to MMI associate director, Scott Baker, and Esri chief scientist, Dawn Wright. A description of the tools has now been published in the journal Transactions in GIS.

In a virtual field trip, “Southern Exposure,” viewers can join Dr. Markus Horning and his colleagues as they investigate how changing sea ice conditions may impact ice-dependent polar seals, like Antarctica's Weddell seals. The website was produced by the education department of the Alaska Sea Life Center and includes multiple videos, classroom activities, lesson plans, and associated material for school teachers.

MMI’s Jim Rice, coordinator of the Oregon Marine Mammal Stranding Network, and collaborator Debbie Duffield from Portland State University, have been busy performing necropsies on dolphins that stranded along the Oregon coast in late February. Tissue samples have been sent to OSU’s School of Veterinary Medicine, and others, for analysis. The causes of death are still undetermined. (The full article can be read in the Newport News-Times.)

A new webcam has been installed at Newport’s popular sea lion haul out, Port Dock 1. This camera is monitored by the Oregon Marine Mammal Stranding Network to check for injuries due to entanglements in fishery gear and marine debris. Sea lions periodically come ashore with plastic packing bands wrapped around their necks and fishing lures hanging from their mouths. A capture cage is sometimes deployed at this site to treat entangled sea lions.

For the past 7 years, MMI principal investigator Markus Horning has been following the lives and deaths of endangered Alaskan Steller sea lions. His results suggest that predation, not a drop in birth rate, is the largest impediment to recovery of the species.

NEWPORT (The Oregonian) – Motel manager Frank Brooks called the Oregon Marine Mammal Stranding Network. Then someone saw the turtle lift its head, someone else thought they saw it move a flipper, and so the race was on to save the 135-pound green sea turtle.

A new study suggests that the impact of predation on juvenile Steller sea lions in the Gulf of Alaska has been significantly underestimated, creating a “productivity pit” from which their population will have difficulty recovering without a reduction of predators.