A stretch of exceptionally calm seas off of the North Carolina coast made for two very productive field days for some of the Read Lab researchers and students. On Friday morning, 4 October, we deployed five marine autonomous recording units (MARU), or pop-up buoys, across the continental shelf off of the Outer Banks as part …
Research conducted by Ph.D. student Kristina Cammen and Master’s student Brianne Soulen, a previous member of the Johnston lab, was recently featured on the Smithsonian’s Ocean Portal blog (http://ocean.si.edu/blog/ice-loving-seals-and-loss-sea-ice). Brianne and Kristina worked with Duke Marine Lab faculty Tom Schultz and Dave Johnston to investigate environmental and genetic factors that may affect harp seal stranding …
Joy is coordinating a new passive acoustic monitoring project to detect North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) migrating past Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, during their seasonal movements to and from breeding grounds in Florida. This is a collaborative effort between research partners at Duke University, NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center (http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/psb/acoustics/), and Cornell’s Bioacoustics Research …
Danielle and Andy are working with fishermen in the North Carolina pelagic longline fishery to trial a new acoustic deterrent, the Dolphin Interactive Dissuasive (DiD) device. Pilot whales are believed to mainly eat squid, but some short-finned pilot whales interact with pelagic longline fishing gear and remove bait and hooked tuna, a behavior known as …