Meet the Expert: Tim Cole
Tim Cole works with a team of scientists who conduct surveys from aircraft to monitor North Atlantic right whales in the Northeast, providing valuable clues about their location, behavior, health and body condition, and population status.
Meet the Expert: Barb Zoodsma
Learn how NOAA and its partners track right whale mothers and calves to gain more information about this imperiled species in this Q&A with Barb Zoodsma, NOAA Fisheries’ Southeast Region’s North Atlantic Right Whale Recovery Program Coordinator.
Meet the Expert: Sofie Van Parijs
Passive acoustic monitoring is one of the powerful tools NOAA experts use for understanding and monitoring shifts in North Atlantic right whales’ movements. Using technologies like autonomous listening gliders, floating high-tech buoys, or bottom-mounted recorders deployed along the coast, researchers can record whale calls and obtain new insights into range expansion or decline and changing distribution patterns. Learn more about North Atlantic right whale acoustic monitoring in this Q&A with NOAA zoologist Sofie Van Parijs, who started NOAA’s Northeast passive acoustic research group in 2006.
Meet the Expert: Mike Asaro
Entanglement in fishing lines attached to gillnets and traps on the ocean floor is one of the greatest threats to the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. Mike Asaro, Ph.D., is the Marine Mammal and Sea Turtle Branch Chief of the NOAA Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office. Learn more about his work with North Atlantic right whales and how NOAA, in coordination with the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team, is coming up with innovative technologies and policies to reduce gear entanglements.
Meet the Expert: David Morin
Fishing gear entanglement is one of the leading known causes of North Atlantic right whale deaths in the United States and Canada. Ropes or lines can cut into a whale’s body, cause serious injuries, and result in infections and mortality. Even if a gear entanglement does not ultimately result in death, it can cause severe stress to the whales, making it difficult for the animals to swim and feed, and reducing the likelihood that they will survive to reproduce.
Meet the Expert: Mendy Garron
Learn more about stranding emergency response and analysis for the North Atlantic right whale in this Q&A with NOAA Marine Biologist Mendy Garron, who coordinates stranding response efforts along the East Coast.
Meet the Experts: Shannon Bettridge and Peter Kelliher
Learn more about ship strike reduction and response for the North Atlantic right whale in this Q&A with Marine Mammal and Sea Turtle Conservation Division Chief Shannon Bettridge and Greater Atlantic Regional Marine Mammal Ship Strike and Monitoring Coordinator Peter Kelliher.
