Pacific Baja 

Beaked whales live at depth beyond the continental shelf and surface for short periods of time, making them difficult to study using visual methods. They are among the least understood marine mammals.

Passive acoustic surveys are a promising potential alternative for distributional studies of odontocetes. These surveys are relatively low-cost, efficient, and effective in hard-to-study conditions.

Recently, an unidentified Mesoplodon was spotted off the western coast of Baja California (Barlow et al. 2021), which the community believes to be an entirely new species. We will be sailing and recording through this region to learn more about the population density, diversity, and distribution.

In addition, we are prototyping new technologies to improve towable acoustic data collection. Our collaborator developed a low-cost towable array, the “Towfish,” with which we can gather acoustic data while underway.

Several articles have suggested that naval ship’s use of mid frequency active sonar is linked to mass strandings of beaked whales. An improved understanding of basic beaked whale biology could help predict the species density and distribution over time and improve management strategies to reduce mass strandings.