The Conservation Medicine team is working to develop better tools and analytical approaches for studying marine mammal populations.
We collaborate with experts across many disciplines, as well as NOAA and other management agencies, to ensure that the best possible study designs, data and sample collection, and data analysis and modeling approaches are available for marine mammal-related decision making. For example:
- Our scientists collaborated with WEST Inc. to develop finFindR, an application to automatically identify photographed bottlenose dolphins and match to historical records. Our researchers are now using finFindR to follow individuals, studying their survival and reproductive output, for bottlenose dolphin stocks in Louisiana, Alabama, the Florida Panhandle, Georgia, and South Carolina.
- We are collaborating with researchers from NOAA and the University of St. Andrews to develop models that will forecast how oil spills may affect dolphin and whale population trajectories, AND to develop short- and long-term options for how to restore those injured populations.
- We are developing new techniques to remotely attach satellite-linked tags to dolphins. These new techniques will allow researchers to deploy satellite-linked tags, which relay information about location and movement, remotely without having to catch or restrain the animal.
