Genevieve Davis Archives - Saving Seafood

New tool aims to map whale movement

July 12, 2021 — A lot of people want to know where right whales are and where they are going. As the state’s lobster fishery faces dramatic changes to preserve the species, regulators, fishermen and conservationists all want to know the paths the critically endangered species take up and down the east coast. 

“We’re constantly being asked ‘Where did you get detections?’” said Genevieve Davis, a research biologist working in passive acoustic research at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Mass. 

To help visualize the paths of right whales, as well as several other species of whale, Davis and other researchers created a mapping tool based on data from underwater listening devices that have picked up the sounds of whales going all the way back to 2004. 

The map includes data from several different listening devices, known as hydrophones, operated from platforms such as bottom-mounted moorings, surface buoys, Slocum gliders and towed hydrophone arrays. It also brought together data from several different studies and researchers and compiled them into a single, navigable tool. 

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

In fight over right whales and lobster fishery, all sides want to know more about the whales’ activities off Maine

June 28, 2021 — The historic migration patterns of endangered North Atlantic right whales have been changing over the past decade, possibly due to climate change. Federal regulators, meanwhile, are considering drastic measures to protect the whales against deadly entanglement in fishing gear and rope.

So, the question of where and when the whales are swimming in relation to Maine’s lobster fishery is gaining urgency. Now, new efforts are underway to pinpoint their travel habits.

Last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration created a new website that maps almost two decades of work to detect whales off the east coast, via “passive acoustic” recorders set on buoys, on submerged platforms, and on underwater gliders that can zig and zag around the Gulf of Maine for months at a time.

“We’re seeing that you are getting whales. They are calling,” said Genevieve Davis, a research biologist at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Baleen Whales Have Changed Their Distribution in the Western North Atlantic

July 17, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Researchers have been using passive acoustic recordings of whale calls to track their movements. They have found that four of the six baleen whale species found in the western North Atlantic Ocean — humpback, sei, fin and blue whales — have changed their distribution patterns in the past decade. The recordings were made over 10 years by devices moored to the seafloor at nearly 300 locations from the Caribbean Sea to western Greenland.

“All four whale species were present in waters from the southeast U.S. to Greenland, with humpbacks also present in the Caribbean Sea,” said Genevieve Davis, a senior acoustician at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and lead author of the study. “These four species were detected throughout all the regions in the winter, suggesting that baleen whales are widely distributed during these months. Humpback, sei, fin, and blue whales also showed significant changes in where they were detected between the two time periods considered in this study: before and after 2010.”

A large group of federal, state and academic researchers from the United States and Canada conducted the study, published in Global Change Biology. It is the first to show the occurrence of these four species across the western North Atlantic Ocean over long time spans and at a large spatial scale. The study also demonstrates how whale distributions have changed over time, and in particular since 2010.

Read the full release here

New tech helps scientists detect right whales off Maine’s coast

February 24, 2020 — New acoustic monitors off Maine’s coast have detected the presence of North Atlantic right whales this winter. Scientists are trying to gather new data on the endangered animals’ whereabouts.

In mid-December, scientists put a set of underwater drones in the Atlantic Ocean. One of them is charting a zigzag course to and from Maine’s coast, starting Down East and working its way southwest. It’s currently heading eastward off Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

During its cruise, the glider’s electronic ears have heard dozens of calls from finback and humpback whales and, on seven occasions, the call of the endangered North Atlantic right whale.

“We usually figure about a 10 kilometer of five-mile radius is on average where we can hear them,” said Genevieve Davis, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Davis is a coordinator for the project, which also includes researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News