Marc Rams i Rios, PhD Student, Oregon State University Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab When I moved to Oregon to begin my PhD, I pictured long days on the water watching gray whales feed and travel along the coast. That does happen, and it is as incredible as … Continue reading How Humans and Cetaceans Shape Each Other
Dr. KC Bierlich, Postdoctoral Scholar, OSU Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, & Conservation Sciences, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab Drones are becoming more and more prevalent in marine mammal research, particularly for non-invasively obtaining morphological measurements of cetaceans via photogrammetry to identify important health metrics (see this and this previous blog). For example, the GEMM … Continue reading An ‘X’travaganza! Introducing the Marine Mammal Institute’s Center of Drone Excellence (CODEX)
Dr. KC Bierlich, Postdoctoral Scholar, OSU Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, & Conservation Sciences, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna (GEMM) Lab A recent blog post by GEMM Lab’s PhD Candidate Clara Bird gave a recap of our 8th consecutive GRANITEfield season this year. In her blog, Clara highlighted that we saw 71 individual gray whales this season, 61 of which … Continue reading A smaller sized gray whale: recent publication finds PCFG whales are smaller than ENP whales
Clara Bird, PhD Candidate, OSU Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab As you may remember, last year’s field season was a remarkable summer for our team. We were pleasantly surprised to find an increased number of whales in our study area compared to previous years and were even more excited that … Continue reading The whales keep coming and we keep learning: a wrap up of the eighth GRANITE field season.
Sagar Karki, Master’s student in the Computer Science Department at Oregon State University What beasts? Good question! We are talking about gray whales in this article but honestly we can tweak the system discussed in this blog a little and make it usable for other marine animals too. Understanding the morphology, such as body area … Continue reading Fantastic beasts and how to measure them!
Dr. Leigh Torres GEMM Lab, OSU, Marine Mammal Institute It’s often difficult to directly see the application of our research to environmental management decisions. This was not the case for me as I stepped off our research vessel Tuesday morning in Wellington and almost directly (after pausing for a flat white) walked into an environmental … Continue reading What it looks like when science meets management decisions