Some of the research efforts conducted in SOCAL-BRS were presented and discussed by one of our team members Dr. Jeremy Goldbogen at the recent Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting in South Carolina.  A popular press article on some of the work Jeremy has been doing with SOCAL-BRS and other related projects ran recently in Science Magazine <http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/01/a-whales-virtual-reality.html?ref=wp>.  The first few paragraphs of the article are given here.  Nice work Jeremy!

CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA—A surfacing whale is a sight to see, but it would be even more dramatic to watch one ply the ocean depths. Researchers have taken a step closer to doing just that with sophisticated radio-tagging technology and a new computer program that uses the data to recreate a whale’s path underwater. The results, presented here yesterday at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, are helping scientists understand how the school bus-sized beasts are able to take in enough food to sustain their great girth, and how underwater noises, such as sonar, might affect their well-being.

Comparative physiologist Jeremy Goldbogen of the Cascadia Research Collective in Olympia, Washington, studies feeding in blue fin and other so-called rorqual whales. For almost a decade, he and his colleagues have been attaching suction cup radio tags onto the backs of the cetaceans. The tags record depth, sound, and other parameters as the whales swim. After a set amount of time, they fall off, float to the surface, and send out a radio signal so they can be retrieved and their data analyzed.

The work showed that in one giant gulp, a blue whale—the biggest creature on Earth—takes in 125% of its body weight in water and krill. During their dives, the cetaceans ram into patches of krill, opening their mouths wide and wrapping their jaws around prey-laden water, a move that stops them short. Next, they close their mouths and push water through their baleen, a system of plates that filter out the food, then speed up for another feeding bout.

But details about this feeding strategy had been lacking. This past summer, Goldbogen monitored several blue and fin whales with new tag technology that detects the changes in the whales’ orientation in space, much like smart phones “know” whether they’re held in a horizontal or vertical position and adapt screens accordingly. For the 6 to 24 hours they are attached to the whale, the tags also record depth and sound; from the loudness of the water rushing past a diving whale, researchers can calculate its speed. “We use these sensors to reconstruct what the whales are doing,” Goldbogen said.