Deep-diving toothed whales wash up dead with stomachs full of plastic and prey alike. Their built-in sonar likely can’t tell the difference. Check out Nowacek Lab Member Dr. Greg Merrill’s research feature in National Geographic HERE. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/plastic-whales-echolocation-deep-sea
Second year PhD student Greg Merrill discusses various impacts of plastic pollution in this article written for the New Security Beat, a blog for the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program.
Lab Member Charles Muirhead coauthors a paper identifying a new population of Blue Whales! Check out the New York Times article to learn more about how the team used acoustic data to distinguish the previously unidentified population.
Check out this post to watch how the Nowacek Lab is working with the U.S. Navy to understand how varying levels of sonar exposure affect whale behavior!
What would you do if you heard the call of a hungry killer whale? Would you stay to fight or would you swim as fast as you could in the other direction? Not sure? Find out how short-finned pilot whales and Risso’s responded in our newest paper Selective reactions to
Last spring, Duke undergraduates Ashley Blawas (Biomedical Engineering), Brandon Dalla Rosa (Electrical & Computer Engineering) and Sam Kelly (Mechanical Engineering) received a Follow-on Student Research Award to improve on the research methods employed by their Bass Connections team History and Future of Ocean Energy. Mentored by Douglas Nowacek, they aim to produce a digital
The Blue Devil Engineering team based out of Duke University is using drones, drop pods and machine learning to map the seafloor. Led by Professors Martin Brooke, Tyler Bletsch and Douglas Nowacek, the team is an enthusiastic group of high school, undergraduate and graduate students working together to develop their
Shooting air guns into the ocean could soon be fair game in the search for oil and gas along the North Carolina coast, even if the seismic blasts “harass marine mammals” such as whales. The National Marine Fisheries Service is considering allowing the practice by energy companies and wants the public
Animal behaviour can provide valuable information for wildlife management and conservation. We describe several methods developed by marine mammal scientists to study behaviour, primarily of cetaceans, focusing on technological advances: unmanned aerial systems (UAS), satellite-linked telemetry, passive acoustics and multisensor high-resolution acoustic recording tags. We then go on to explain how the data collected
For a half century a sound heard in the Southern Ocean and beyond has baffled acousticians. The noise – nicknamed “the bio-duck” – appears in the winter and spring. The repetitive, low frequency noise has been recorded many times in the waters around the Antarctic and western Australia. Our paper has
