Our #UKIRSC26 Conference prize winners have been announced! First up, we’ve got the runner up for best short talk: @dasweeney.bsky.social “Using mark-recapture models to understand goose-beaked whale residency in Southern California” 🌊 Thank you to @infohackit.bsky.social for sponsoring this prize!

Presenting on biodiversity, David Sweeney (@dasweeney.bsky.social) kicks off our Population session by using Bayesian mark-recapture models to better understand the residency patterns and population dynamics of goose-beaked whales in Southern California. 🐋📉 #UKIRSC26

MarEcoTel has another exciting paper out on goose-beaked whales. Here we used estimates of energy expenditures from tag data to dive deeper into the physiology of these amazing deep divers. Results suggest that Ziphius run out of oxygen for a large portion of foraging dives. DOI: 10.1113/EP093021

For my undergraduate research, we published an automated peak detection method for behavioral event identification using tag data and showed its effectiveness for detecting blue whale lunges and Risso's dolphin prey capture attempts. DOI: 10.1186/s40317-019-0169-3

MarEcoTel published results on movements and diving behaviors as recorded by LIMPET tags deployed on Risso's dolphins in Southern California. These model results lay an exciting foundation for us to continue our research on this species. DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2022.873548

MarEcoTel previously published a classification tree algorithm that predicts whether a goose-beaked whale dive contained foraging based on continuously recorded movement data from SMRT tags. We compare our algorithm with K-means or depth/duration threshold clustering methods. DOI: 10.3354/meps14068

MarEcoTel published this paper last year using SMRT tags on goose-beaked whales to highlight trends in their foraging behavior in the Southern California Bight. These whales love foraging near the seafloor and show interesting regional variability. DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2024.1415602

MarEcoTel contributed data and analytical help on this study of beaked whale data from around the world. It's exciting to see comparative studies like this come out in wide-scale collaborative efforts to better understand these fascinating whales! DOI: 10.1111/mms.70070