News

Our crew on the R/V Shearwater had a very busy day on Sunday, July 21st. We started at first light by deploying a High Frequency Recording Package (HARP) in our study area off Cape Hatteras. We deployed the HARP in a depth of about 1,000 m – it will record the vocalizations of goose-beaked whales […]

After a frustrating summer marked by very poor offshore weather conditions, everything came together in early August, allowing us to conduct a successful Controlled Exposure Experiment (CEE) with tactical mid-frequency sonar signals deployed by the USS Farragut. A brief weather window allowed our field team to deploy five satellite-linked dive recorders […]

On August 6th, we conducted a successful Controlled Exposure Experiment with a group of four Cuvier’s beaked whales that included an individual equipped with a satellite-linked dive recorder (Zc93) and another whale (Zc19_218a) equipped with a Digital Acoustic Tag (DTAG). This is the first time we have been able to […]

Last week we welcomed Jessica Aschettino to our field team to deploy satellite-linked dive recorders for the second phase of the 2018 Behavioral Response Study, funded by NAVFAC Atlantic (U.S. Navy). Daniel Webster, who usually deploys satellite tags for us, injured his hand and was unavailable. Jessica, who works for […]

We have just wrapped up field work in the first phase of the 2018 Atlantic Behavioral Response Study. We’ll take a month off and then start again in the middle of July with a new round of tag deployments and Controlled Exposure Experiments (CEEs).   On June 13th we conducted […]

It has been a challenging start to field work for the 2018 Atlantic Behavioral Response Study. Windy conditions have kept us off the water on several days and when we have been offshore, our study animals have not been very co-operative. But despite these challenges, we managed to complete our […]

  Andy is in San Felipe this month, participating in the Vaquita CPR project. The objective is to catch as many of the remaining vaquitas as possible and bring them into human care. You can read about the initial stages of the project in a news article here. Wish us […]

Congratulations to Brianna for winning the Archie Carr Student Award for Best Conservation Poster at this year’s International Sea Turtle Symposium held in (wait for it…) Las Vegas. Sometimes what happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas  

More than 140 students, educators and environmental professionals took part in the Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic Marine Mammal Symposium (SEAMAMMS) here at the Duke Marine Lab last weekend.  Undergraduate and graduate students presented their research findings on marine mammal biology and conservation. Attendees also took part in a panel discussion about the future […]

Nicola Quick is the senior author on a new paper on the diving behavior of short-finned pilot whales published in Scientific Reports. We used Hidden Markov Models (HMM) to characterize states of diving behaviour and the transitions between states in short-finned pilot whales. We used three parameters (number of buzzes, maximum dive […]