Biologists used to studying endangered Southern Resident killer whales spent almost a week in September on a whole different kind of effort.
Biologists used to studying endangered Southern Resident killer whales spent almost a week in September on a whole different kind of effort. They were searching for a sophisticated tag with a rare overnight record of a whale’s behavior and acoustic world.
Researchers climbed mountains in Washington’s San Juan Islands and southern British Columbia in search of distant radio signals. Others took their tracking antennas aboard ferries because they were the only vessels operating in the dense wildfire smoke blanketing the Northwest.
All while the tag’s battery life ticked away.
The whales were feeding off the southwest side of San Juan Island when a team from NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center attached the tag. It was a skeleton crew of the minimum three people to reduce the risk of coronavirus. They used a long pole to attach the tag with suction cups to the flank of Southern Resident killer whale K37. It was the afternoon of September 11.
Continue reading at NOAA Fisheries.
Image via Candice Emmons/NOAA Fisheries.
