Category Archives: Uncategorized
Need to cool off?
While it’s pretty cool here in Scotland, many of you are having a blazing summer. We hope this Emperor penguin does the trick!
Twilight moon
Moon over our home and field station in Johnstone Strait, British Columbia.
Happy Birthday Fin Whale
We love fin whales. A few years ago, this photo of a fin whale was taken on Rob’s birthday during a series of surveys he initiated with Raincoast. The surveys for marine mammals in British Columbia coastal waters yielded an abundance estimate for fin whales (corresponding to an area that’s roughly the PNCIMA region) of 496 [...]
ONCE UPON A TIME
Full disclosure: we didn’t always want to be marine biologists. Or did we? Rob thought he wanted to study dinosaurs, but he clearly had a knack for line transect surveys on Comox Lake in the early 1980s. Wishart didn’t swim until he was nearly 2. And Erin? Well, you could not have told this 4 [...]
THE AUGUST BREAK
Happy August! Do you know Susannah Conway, the extraordinary photographer? If you don’t, you should. Click on her link. We’ll wait for you while you check her out. Neat, right? Susannah has started a great new movement called The August Break. We’re so excited to participate. She’s challenged/inspired us to post a different photo every [...]
Oceans Initiative launches Quiet Ocean Campaign
There’s a whole lot of noise in the ocean, and it seems to be getting worse. Chronic ocean noise in some sites is doubling every decade. Today on World Oceans Day, we explain why we should all care about the rising levels of noise on whales and other marine species. In 2008, we started an [...]
Are you in a healthy relationship with the ocean? 5 ways to show the ocean your love
Nothing says commitment like real estate. Support efforts to create Marine Protected Areas. We went to the Zoological Society of London’s recent Symposium on High-Seas MPAs and found out how much the world hearts the ocean. Currently, only 1.17% of the ocean is protected. In 2002, nations pledged to protect 10% by 2012. We’d best [...]
Thinking big. Establishing general principles from little truths: lessons from marine mammal research
When most people think of scientists doing research on animals, we think of geeks in lab coats, experimenting on lab rats. Guinea pigs. Fruit flies. Maybe a guppy. Actually, marine mammals make fascinating study animals, but their aquatic lifestyle and large body size pose challenges to studying them in the wild — you try to [...]
TOP TEN IN TWENTY-TEN
Marine conservation highlights: 2010 1. A protected area for killer whales? We kicked the year off with a paper published by Erin, Rob and Dr Dawn Noren in Animal Conservation proposing a Marine Protected Area for southern resident killer whales. It was profiled on NPR and in dozens of news stories. Our scientific advice fits nicely with the recovery [...]
DOESN’T EVERY GIRL WANT A BLOG FOR HER BIRTHDAY?
I’m so excited to launch our new website today. It happens to be my birthday, and this (and the chocolate cake) was the perfect gift. We love our research on whales and dolphins, and are happy to finally have a beautiful space for our work to live and grow. We hope you like it here, [...]
photo by J. Towers
