Underwater Behavior of Blue Whales Examined with Suction-cup Attached Tags

The overall long-term goal of the research is to examine the underwater behavior of blue whales, especially vocal and feeding behavior. Understanding whale vocal behavior is important to both evaluate potential impacts of underwater sounds and also to allow interpretation of remotely gathered data on whales calls from Navy hydrophone arrays or remote recording packages e.g. Oleson et al. 2003. While increasing attention has been paid to the remote monitoring of blue whale behavior and vocalizations, relatively little is known about the behavior of individual animals McDonald et al. 2001. We seek to monitor a variety of parameters including visual behavior, vocalizations, and dive patterns in the context of individually identified known-sex animals.