{"id":5357,"date":"2023-10-23T15:05:39","date_gmt":"2023-10-23T22:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/?p=5357"},"modified":"2023-10-23T15:06:13","modified_gmt":"2023-10-23T22:06:13","slug":"the-whales-keep-coming-and-we-keep-learning-a-wrap-up-of-the-eight-granite-field-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/2023\/10\/23\/the-whales-keep-coming-and-we-keep-learning-a-wrap-up-of-the-eight-granite-field-season\/","title":{"rendered":"The whales keep coming and we keep learning: a wrap up of the eighth GRANITE field season."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Clara Bird<\/a>, PhD Candidate, OSU Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As you may remember, last year\u2019s field season was a remarkable summer<\/a> 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 many of them were old friends. As we started this field season, we were all curious to know if this year would be a repeat. And it\u2019s my pleasure to report that this season was even better!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Team selfies on the water<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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We started the season with an exciting day (6 known whales! see Lisa\u2019s blog<\/a>) and the excitement (and whales) just kept coming. This season we saw 71 individual whales across 215 sightings! Of those 71, 44 were whales we saw last year, and 10 were new to our catalog, meaning that we saw 17 whales this season that we had not seen in at least two years! There is something extra special about seeing a whale we have not seen in a while because it means that they are still alive, and the sighting gives us valuable data to continue studying health and survival. Another cool note is that 7 of our 12 new whales from last year came back this year, indicating recruitment to our study region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Included in that group of 7 whales are the two calves from last year! Again, indicating good recruitment of new whales to our study area. We saw both Lunita and Manta (previously nick-named \u2018Roly-poly\u2019) throughout this season and we were always happy to see them back in our area and feeding on their own.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Drone image of Lunita from 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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Drone image of Manta from 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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We had an especially remarkable encounter with Lunita at the end of this season when we found this whale surface feeding on porcelain crab larvae (video 1)! This is a behavior that we rarely observe, and we\u2019ve never seen a juvenile whale use this behavior before, inspiring questions around how Lunita knew how to perform this behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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