Blog Posts

Written by Martin van Aswegen Following disrupted fieldwork in 2020, this year was a great opportunity for MMRP PhD student Martin van Aswegen and Director Dr. Lars Bejder to make up for lost time and data. Representing our third consecutive year of data collection on humpback whale ( Megaptera novaeangliae ) body condition across Hawaii and Alaska, 2021 was shaping up to be an important year for the project. The humpback whale energetics project aims to quantify the ene

Written by Liah McPherson Well, the first semester of my master’s degree was fairly routine: taking classes, reading papers, and getting together all the bits and pieces necessary to begin my research in January. But less than a week into 2021, I was out on the water, bouncing around in an XL north swell, trying to find spinner dolphins during my first winter field effort. Since then, I’ve been to Maui (twice) to help Martin out with his PhD work on humpback whales (and lea

Written by Liah McPherson Studying dolphins has always been my life’s goal. Truly, I cannot remember a time in my life when I wasn’t fascinated by these animals (my parents have saved many anatomically pathetic drawings of dolphins from my early childhood). So in April, when I found out I was accepted to the Marine Biology Graduate Program at UH Manoa set to work with the Marine Mammal Research Program (MMRP) –– to say I was overjoyed would be an understatement! After mo

Written by Martin van Aswegen Following successful winter sampling in 2019, Marine Mammal Research Program (MMRP) Director Dr. Lars...

Written by: Lars Bejder Every winter, ~10,000 humpback whales migrate to Hawaii, with the main purpose of breeding. The time period...

Written by Guido Parra After almost 13 years post my PhD and working hard to climb up the academic food chain, I decided it was time to...

Written by Martin van Aswegen Winter 2019 was a busy, but exciting time for the Marine Mammal Research Program (MMRP) humpback whale...

Written by Fabien Vivier This winter, I joined Andy Szabo from the Alaska Whale Foundation in Sitka, Alaska, for two one-week field trips...

Written by Fabien Vivier As part of our collaborative project with NOAA PIFSC, JIMAR and Sea Life Park entitled "Calibrating UAS...

Written by Fabien Vivier Last month (Oct 2018) we visited the Pacific Whale Foundation on Maui to initiate our project focusing on...