We are back down in Puget Sound for year three of our collaborative project with the CWR!

We are back down in Puget Sound for year three of our collaborative project with the Center for Whale Research! The primary goal of the project is pairing localized hydrophone recordings of Southern Resident killer whales with drone observations of behavior, with this year's fieldwork supported by grants from both Rock The Ocean and SeaDoc Society.

Today was the first full day of our three-week field season, and the weather could not have been better. After completing some equipment calibrations in the morning, we were able to meet up with the T37As and T99s in Admiralty Inlet. When Southern Residents aren't around, we will opportunistically take data on Bigg's killer whales as well with the same goal of linking calls to behavior. While we've had a handful of Bigg's encounters over the previous two field seasons, this was only our second one where we had them vocalizing while we had the drone up!

We'll have more to share soon, but in the meantime, the smiles after our first whale encounter of the trip say it all. It felt good to be back out there with such a great team!