Florida Leatherback Turtles
We tracked 10 leatherback turtles by satellite from 2 Florida Atlantic Coast nesting beaches for a period ranging from 38 days to more than 454 days. Movement and foraging areas were often coastal, which contrasts with other satellite telemetry studies where leatherbacks are more pelagic. Using kernel home-range estimation we identified the primary internesting residence […]
Leatherback Sea Turtle
Swim speed, dive behavior and movements were recorded for seven female leatherback sea turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) during a single internesting interval near St Croix in the US Virgin Islands. Turtles swam continuously throughout the day and night. There were two swim-speed patterns; the most common was slightly U-shaped,with high speeds at the initiation and conclusion of […]
Deep Rover
In 1985 HSWRI was part of the team that tested the Deep Rover at San Clemente Island, California. This pilot project was coordinated by Sylvia Earle who previously founded Deep Ocean Engineering and Deep Ocean Technology with British engineer Graham Hawkes in the early 1980s. Together they designed the submersible Deep Rover, a vehicle capable of […]
Leopard seals
Though leopard seals live and reproduce almost exclusively in fast ice and pack ice habitats surrounding the Antarctic Continent, they have been reported to range northward to South Georgia in the South Atlantic Ocean, South Africa, Patagonia, New Zealand and several islands in the South Atlantic, South Pacific, and southern Indian oceans. We summarize recent […]
Green Abalone
Due to severe declines in abundance throughout southern California, the green abalone (Haliotis fulgens Philippi 1845) became protected under a state-sponsored fishery moratorium in 1997 and was declared a NOAA NMFS Species of Concern in 2004. Recently, H. fulgens was chosen for possible stock restoration via translocation of wild adults to depleted habitat and supplementation through releasing cultured […]
Atlantic Bluefin Tuna
Pop-up satellite archival tags were implanted into 68 Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus Linnaeus), ranging in size from 91 to 295kg, in the southern Gulf of Maine (n=67) and off the coast of North Carolina (n=1) between July 2002 and January 2003. Individuals tagged in the Gulf of Maine left that area in late fall […]
JJ the Gray Whale
In January 1997, a very young California gray whale was rescued near Marine del Rey, Los Angeles, and delivered to SeaWorld of California in San Diego. She was semi-comatose, severely infested with whale lice, and had numerous cuts and ulcers over her body. She weighed 758 kg, was 4.2 m long and judged to be […]
Basking Sharks
Schools of up to 50 basking sharks (Cetorhinus maximus) were observed on the warm side of a persistent thermal front in the southern Gulf of Maine from early September through mid-October 2002. Aerial photographs showed a variety of schooling patterns, including echelon, cartwheel and milling formations. While the function of these aggregations remains unknown, they […]
Killer Whale Calls
HSWRI scientists analyzed killer whale calls from Iceland and Norway to see if there were distinctive dialects for different pods. This was the first time the calls of these killer whale pods were studied. Underwater recordings of killer whale calls were made off Norway and Iceland from 1983 to 1985 in association with efforts to […]
California Gnatcatchers
Our laboratory conducted a five‐year study on the potential effects of helicopter noise on the reproductive success of the coastal California gnatcatcher (Polioptila californica californica) on Marine Corps Air Station Miramar (MCAS Miramar) in Southern California. Seven‐hundred twenty‐one nests were monitored for reproductive success, predation, noise levels, and habitat quality. An array of Larson‐Davis sound […]