Marine conservation

It sounds like a crime show episode at sea: In late January 2024, federal regulators learned that a dead female North Atlantic right whale had been sighted near Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. The whale was towed to shore, where more than 20 U.S. and Canadian scientists converged to perform a necropsy, or animal autopsy. On Feb. 14, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that the whale was #5120 in a catalog that tracks individual right whales. Further, the agency said, rope that had been deeply embedded in the whale’s tail had likely come from lobster fishing gear in Maine. Entanglement in fishing gear is a deadly threat to these critically endangered animals. Scientists estimate that before commercial whaling scaled up in the 18th and 19th centuries, there may have been as many as 10,000 North Atlantic right whales. Today, fewer than 360 individuals remain. Almost 90% of them have been entangled at least once. When whales become en...

Many of the ocean’s most charismatic animals spend their lives swimming, flying or gliding thousands of miles, from the coasts to the high seas. Arctic terns, humpback whales and sea turtles are examples. Scientists have spent many years documenting and studying these magnificent journeys. Chronicling where these species go is just the beginning. The next steps are understanding when and how far each animal travels and what triggers it to roam. We are a marine biologist and an evolutionary ecologist and have worked together to study the nesting and migration habits of endangered olive ridley sea turtles (Lepidochelys olivacea). This information is vital for managing the turtles’ recovery – but our research shows that two identical-looking olive ridleys may follow very different paths. Approximate range of olive ridley sea turtles. NOAA Protecting animals that move Mapping the s...

Playing with my children on a beach on Hatteras Island, a barrier island off the coast of North Carolina, I struck up a conversation with a man walking his dog. We were standing next to a turtle nest, which the National Park Service had roped off with a sign stating that the spot was federally protected. “Wouldn’t it be nice to know exactly when the baby sea turtles will come out?” I mused. He smiled and said “Well, we’re working on that.” That conversation generated a partnership to develop TurtleSense, a novel, inexpensive way to monitor turtle nest activity remotely. In a newly published study, we describe how it works. Participants included Eric Kaplan, the man I met on the beach and the founder of the Hatteras Island Ocean Center; David Hermeyer and Samuel Wantman, retired engineers at the San Francisco nonprofit Nerds Without Borders; IBM master inventor Thomas Zimmerman; and veterinary student Joshua Chamberlin. As a developmental n...