The Over-whale-ming Plastic Problem
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.
A New Population of Blue Whales Was Discovered Hiding in the Indian Ocean
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.
U.S. Navy Highlights Behavioral Response Study
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!
Fight or flight? Pilot whales and Risso’s dolphins response to killer whale calls
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
Engineering Students Seek a Better Way to Track Endangered Marine Mammals
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
XPRIZE: Duke’s High Capacity Drones and Drop Pods
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
Plans for Seismic Surveys off NC Coast
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
Hot off the press: Studying cetacean behaviour: new technological approaches and conservation applications
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
‘Bio-duck’ sound mystery solved!
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
Duke team tags entangled whale, helps with disentanglement effort
On February 16th the Duke Marine Lab crew, aboard the R/V RT Barber, spotted a NARW at 14:00, 40 miles east of Jacksonville, Florida. The UNC Wilmington aerial survey team (NOAA Scientific Permit 16473 Issued to UNCW) was also conducting surveys off-shore in the same area for the Navy. Efforts