Talk on Whale Acoustic Study

The "Rockhopper" a passive acoustic recording unit used to listen for and record the sounds of marine mammals. /Photo courtesy of OSU

The American Cetacean Society, Oregon Chapter, will hold a webinar on Saturday, March 18, at 10:00 a.m. Imogen Lucciano, M.SC. of the Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Laboratory at Oregon State University's Marine Mammal Institute, will be the guest presenter. She will discuss the preliminary findings of a study on fin whale acoustic occurrence patterns off the Oregon Coast.

About the talk:

"Though opportunistic records indicate the occurrence of several baleen whale species off the Oregon coast, including fin whales, there are significant gaps in knowledge regarding the temporal and spatial occurrence patterns of these whales. The Holistic Assessment of Living marine resources off Oregon (HALO) project is led by a collaborative team that aims to gain a better understanding of marine predator ecology off the Oregon coast. HALO collects consistent, long-term observations of marine mammal, seabird, and krill presence along the Newport Hydrographic line (off Newport, Oregon, between 65 and 20 nm from shore) through visual surveys, passive acoustic monitoring, and prey mapping. Imogen Lucciano is a master's student in the Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab (GEMM Lab) in the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University. As a member of the HALO Project team, Imogen assists with data collection and is analyzing passive acoustic monitoring data to describe spatial and temporal patterns of fin whale calling activity and will subsequently relate these patterns to environmental characteristics in this study area.

Imogen spent the first ten years of her career serving as a Signals Intelligence Analyst in the U.S. Army. Since, she has moved into the sciences, focusing primarily on Political Science and Marine Mammal Science. She intends to continue her education by pursuing her PhD and eventually attain professional research work collecting and reporting on cetacean acoustics. It is Imogen's passion to learn about the incredible world of cetaceans and hopes that her work will inspire policies on behalf of cetacean conservation. Imogen is a single mom, raising her twelve-year old daughter and four dogs in Corvallis, Oregon."
 

This two-hour talk is free and open to the public. Register for the Zoom link here.