July 6, 2021 — A project of the National Marine Mammal Foundation (NMMF) in the United States, in collaboration with the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, aims to measure the frequency range that minke whales can hear.
The research would fill in an information gap and help lessen human disturbance to a wide range of baleen whales. But it involves capturing and temporarily restraining wild whales, a tricky procedure that some animal rights groups say could stress the big cetaceans.
June 9, 2021 — An international team of scientists is preparing to trap a dozen baleen whales off the coast of Norway and conduct hearing tests on them to gauge their sensitivity to human-made sounds such as sonar.
Researchers have tested the auditory faculties of smaller animals in captivity, but this would be the first time scientists have ever captured live whales in the wild to assess their hearing.
“This has been a long-standing issue, this lack of information on how sensitive the hearing of these large whales is,” said the project’s principal investigator Dorian Houser, of the National Marine Mammal Foundation.
“We’re trying to get the first measurements to empirically show what they hear and how sensitive to sound they are,” he said.
The goal of the project, which was initiated and is partly funded by the U.S. government, is to use what they learn to regulate human-generated noise in the waters where these whales swim. It could have implications for the military as well energy companies.
April 1, 2016 — SEATTLE — The killer whales that spend time in the inland waters of Washington state already are tagged and tracked, photographed and measured.
Researchers follow them by drone and by sea, analyzing their waste and their exhaled breath.
Now, experts want to add another layer to the exhaustive studies: individual health records for each endangered whale.
The records would take existing research on the creatures and combine it in one place. The idea is to use them to monitor the orcas’ health trends individually and as a population. It’s similar to people having one medical record as they move from one doctor to the next or between specialists.
Eighty-four orcas typically appear in Puget Sound from spring to fall.