A New Zealand-based research team assessing the utility of small, multi-rotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to survey and study humpback whales determined that video data collected from a UAV improved…
Baby whales, like all young mammals, rely on their mother’s milk for their early development. A new video follows a nursing humpback whale and her calf and takes the calf’s…
The UNESCO World Heritage Committee has decided to list the Sea of Cortez and its islands in Mexico’s Gulf of California, the only place where the critically endangered vaquita is…
Today we speak with Jessica Crance, a research biologist with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) who recently discovered right whales singing for the first time ever. Listen…
For years, Japan exploited a loophole in international rules to continue hunting whales despite being a member of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) bound by the commercial whaling moratorium that…
There’s more grim news for the North Atlantic right whale, one of the most endangered whale species in the world. In June this year, six individuals were spotted dead in…
Whales like humpbacks are famous for their mellifluous calls, typically referred to as whale songs. But right whales — three species of large baleen whales in the genus Eubalaena —…
Feeding aquatic sponges could provide biologists with unexpected underwater data collection assistance. Sponges (phylum Porifera) are immobile aquatic animals that eat by filtering out food particles from the water around…
According to a report this week by Quartz, two Chinese nationals were arrested last month in the state of California with $3.7-million-worth of totoaba swim bladders that they had smuggled…
Canada has made it illegal to catch and hold whales, dolphins and porpoises in captivity. On June 10, Canada’s House of Commons passed Bill S-203, or the Ending the Captivity…
For centuries, Japanese seafarers have noted two distinct types of pilot whale in their waters. One, known as Naisa goto, has a squarish head, an almost entirely dark body and…
On today’s episode, we speak with Gabriel Melo-Santos, whose study of Araguaian river dolphins in Brazil has revealed that the species is chattier than we’d previously known — and could…
The Araguaian river dolphin was just discovered and described to science in 2014, so it’s no surprise that there’s a lot we don’t know about the cetacean native to the…
The South Pacific archipelago of the Cook Islands might seem a diminutive site from which to launch and manage the largest multi-use marine protected area (MPA) on Earth. The country’s…
The global range of the world’s most recently discovered large whale species is starting to come into focus — as are the man-made threats to the species. Salvatore Cerchio of…
Russian authorities have announced that they will release all 97 whales currently being held captive in the country’s Far East. The whales made news in November last year when an…
Earth’s oceans are drowning in plastic. Humans created 311 million metric tons of the stuff in 2014, and it is expected that we’ll be making four times as much by…
Three suspected totoaba poachers were reportedly shot yesterday by Mexican marines following a confrontation over illegal gillnets that had been confiscated. According to local news outlet Fronteras, the governor of…
Sea otters get creative when it comes to satisfying their hunger. While they use their teeth to crack open hard-shelled prey like mussels and clams, they’ve also been seen using…
On today’s episode, we speak with marine biologist Isha Bopardikar, an independent researcher who is using bioacoustics to study humpback dolphins off the west coast of India. Listen here: …
