The web site of the Cetacean Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is a great place to get information on the status of whales, dolphins and porpoises and updates on recent conservation projects directed at cetacean populations at risk. Check it out!
aread@duke.edu
101 posts
Today is the start of the journey from Punta Arenas, Chile through the Drake Passage to the Antarctic Peninsula. Andy, along with others from the Duke Marine Lab, will be studying humpback, minke, and killer whales. You can follow their journey here!
The manuscript “A field test of acoustic deterrent devices used to reduce interactions between bottlenose dolphins and a coastal gillnet fishery” was recently published in Biological Conservation. The paper was led by Danielle Waples and all co-authors are either current or former members of the Read Lab!
Danielle Waples and Andy Read contributed to a new publication out this week, “To ping or not to ping: the use of active acoustic devices in mitigating interactions between small cetaceans and gillnet fisheries.“
We recently encountered a group of approximately 50 Risso’s dolphins (Grampus griseus) while conducting a photo-ID and biopsy survey along the continental shelf break in Onslow Bay, NC. Risso’s dolphins are characteristic animals of the shelf break along the U.S. east coast, but we rarely see them in Onslow Bay. […]
Read the latest depressing news on harbor porpoise management in New England in an op-ed piece by Carl Safina and Andy on National Geographic’s ‘Ocean Views’ site. You can find out more about the Harbor Porpoise Take Reduction Team here. We’d love to hear from you about innovative ways to reduce […]
Sara McDonald received a “Rethinking Regulation Graduate Research Award” from the Duke Rethinking Regulation Center at the Kenan Institute for Ethics. This award will help pay for Sara’s travel to marine mammal Take Reduction Team meetings, which will ultimately aid in her efforts to evaluate the social and ecological effectiveness […]
Congratulations to Haydee, who is working on the conservation of Antillean manatees in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. This grant, from the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, will allow Haydee to conduct interviews with fishermen in the Dominican Republic and Haiti to document current distribution patterns and historical trends in […]
For the past several months we’ve been studying behavioral responses of pilot whales to the sounds of predators off of Hatteras, NC. The objective of this project is to understand how pilot whales respond to the sounds of potential predators (e.g. killer whales), which share some characteristics with the sounds […]
We’re happy to welcome Heather back from conducting aerial surveys for bowhead whales and other marine mammals in northwestern Alaska. She was part of the Aerial Surveys of Arctic Marine Mammals survey team, co-ordinated by the National Marine Mammal Laboratory (NMML). In addition to bowheads, they recorded sightings of gray, humpback and […]