Blainville's beaked whales seen during our February 2024 Kaua'i field project
We will be undertaking a 9-day field project off Kaua'i starting February 9th. This is project is primarily funded by the U.S. Navy as part of their Marine Species Monitoring Program and is timed to occur prior to a Submarine Command Course (SCC). Our primary goal is to deploy LIMPET satellite tags on one or more species of odontocete cetaceans prior to the SCC, to be able to examine their behavior before, during, and after the SCC. This approach has been very successful in the past as a way of examining how different species respond to Navy training activities including mid-frequency active sonar (MFAS).
This will be the 17th year we’ve worked off Kaua’i (our first project there was in May and June 2003), our 22nd field effort off the island, and the start of the 27th year for this study. In addition to our primary goal, these efforts contribute to our general understanding of what species of whales and dolphins use the area around Kaua’i and Ni’ihau, and photos obtained feed in to our photo-identification catalogs for many different species. Our work off Kaua’i in the past has really benefited by reports of whales or dolphins by local tour operators and fishermen - if you happen to be on the water off Kaua’i between February 9th and 17th and see any pilot whales, false killer whales, melon-headed whales, pygmy killer whales, killer whales, or sperm whales, please call us! If you don't have the cell number of our field crew, contact Robin Baird at "rwbaird" "at" cascadiaresearch.org and we can provide it ahead of time.
Check back on February 10th for updates!