Blog Posts

Written by Gussie Hollers In February 2026, members of the MMRP will head over to Maui for our seventh consecutive humpback whale tagging season! We will be deploying non-invasive Customized Animal Tracking Solutions (CATS) suction-cup tags   on humpback whales for our research on their behavior and energy usage, and collaborating with partners to advance tag deployment technology and physiological measurement techniques. In preparation for our 2026 season, we wanted to refl

Written by MMRP alumna Brijonnay Madrigal We are excited to share a new publication in Royal Society Open Science , which describes the acoustic behavior of false killer whales from the endangered Main Hawaiian Islands insular population. This research encompasses one chapter of former MMRP Ph.D. student and current Scripps postdoctoral researcher, Dr. Brijonnay Madrigal's   dissertation . Authors: Brijonnay Madrigal , William Gough , Jens Currie , Lars Bejder , Augusta Holl

Written by Cameron Nemeth We are pleased to share a new publication  in Marine Mammal Science , entitled: Nares modulation in breathing cetaceans reflects respiratory mechanics Authors: Cameron Nemeth , Joy Reidenberg , Lars Bejder  and Andreas Fahlman A humpback whale breathing at the surface on a brisk morning in Southeast Alaska. Credit: Alaska Whale Foundation  Field Team (NOAA permit #19703) Overview: Cetaceans (dolphins, whales, and porpoises) possess a specialized resp

Whether you’re moving between labs, or between continents, transitions always engender a bit of apprehension and uncertainty in academia. Over the last months, I’ve made quite a transition, from Hawaii to North Carolina (working remotely), and from one project to another within the MMRP. This new project is built on the foundation that the lab and I have been building over the last ~3 years. In essence, we will be taking the analytical framework outlined in our recent publica

We are excited to share our new publication in the Journal of Experimental Biology , titled: Daily Energetic Expenditure and Energy Consumption of Short-Finned Pilot Whales ( https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article-lookup/doi/10.1242/jeb.249821 ). The paper is accompanied by a JEB Spotlight  article.   Authors: William Gough, Brijonnay Madrigal, Augusta Hollers, Jens Currie, Robin Baird, Kristi West, Andreas Fahlman, Frank Fish, Lewis Evans, Martin van Aswegen, Brian Stir

Written by Cameron Nemeth We are pleased to share a new publication  in the Journal of Experimental Biology , entitled: The key to bubble-net feeding: How humpback whale morphology functionally differs from other baleen whales. Accompanying this publication is an Early Career Researcher Spotlight interview with Cameron. Authors: Cameron Nemeth , William Gough , Paolo Segre , Frank Fish , Andrew Szabo , Wesley Fassmann , Scott Thomson , Martin van Aswegen , Julia Burrows ,

Written by Cameron Nemeth I was fortunate to spend the last couple of weeks in a remote lagoon on the western shore of Baja California...

Written by Gussie Hollers Warm Springs bay in June This summer, I was very lucky to be able to spend two months with the Alaska Whale Foundation (AWF) to deploy Customized Animal Tracking Solutions (CATS) suction-cup tags  on humpback whales. This tag data, paired with data from Unoccupied Aerial Systems (UAS, drones), will help us better understand the energy budgets of whales using different foraging strategies. The goal of the third chapter of my dissertation is to quantif

Members of the MMRP and Pacific Whale Foundation spent the first half of November doing fieldwork off the coast of Lānaʻi. The primary goal of this fieldwork was to deploy Customized Animal Tracking Solutions (CATS) suction-cup tags  on false killer whales ( Pseudorca crassidens ) as part of Jens Currie ʻ dissertation research (read more about these tags and this project in last yearʻs Lānaʻi blog pos t!) Video made by Jens Currie featuring the tag deployment on a false kille

Written by Gussie Hollers Members of the MMRP spent the last ten days working with the Pacific Whale Foundation off the coast of Lānaʻi. The primary goal of this fieldwork was to deploy Customized Animal Tracking Solutions (CATS) suction-cup tags on false killer whales ( Pseudorca crassidens ) as part of the dissertation project for new MMRP graduate student Jens Currie . With this data, Jens will be able to gather new insights into the foraging ecology of the endangered Mai