This talk examines some of the challenges gray whales have faced in recent decades including a recent mortality event. It will examine in detail how one group of gray whales called the Sounders found a unique high-risk solution to the challenge they were facing and why that has worked out well for them. John Calambokidis has been studying gray whales including the Sounders and the Pacific Coast Feeding Aggregation for more than 30 years and will talk about the insights they have gained from long term tracking of individuals, deployment of suction cup attached tags, and drone-based research.
Our guest speaker for this program is John Calambokidis, a Senior Research Biologist and one of the founders of Cascadia Research Collective, a non-profit research organization formed in 1979 based in Olympia, Washington.
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John Calambokidis periodically serves as an Adjunct Faculty at the Evergreen State College teaching a course on marine mammals. His primary interests are the biology of marine mammals and the impacts of humans. He has served as Project Director of over 200 projects. He has authored two books on marine mammals (on blue whales and a guide to marine mammals) as well more than 175 publications in scientific journals, 150 technical reports, and 200 scientific presentations. He has conducted studies on a variety of marine mammals in the North Pacific from Central America to Alaska. He served as Project Manager for major projects such as the SPLASH Pacific-wide study of humpback whales and the Southern California Behavioral Response Study to sonar. He has directed long-term research on the status, movements, and underwater behavior of blue, humpback, and gray whales. Some of his recent research has included attaching tags to whales with suction cups to examine their feeding behavior and vocalizations. His work has been covered on shows by National Geographic, Discovery Channel, BBC, and others. He has received awards from the American Cetacean Society for Lifetime Achievement in Marine Mammal Science (in 2012), from the Washington chapter of Wildlife Society for Lifetime Leadership in Conservation (2019), and the Olympia Rotary Club Environmental Protection Award (2018). goes here