ACS San Francisco Bay Chapter 2021 Grant Recipients Present their Cetacean Research - Livestream

In December 2021, through the generous support of individual donors like you, the American Cetacean Society San Francisco Bay Chapter was thrilled to award cetacean research grants to three emerging marine biologists doing critical research in support of our mission: to protect whales, dolphins, porpoises, and their habitats through public education, research grants, and critical conservation actions. These remarkable San Francisco Bay Area graduate students are conducting research that will contribute valuable information toward efforts to understand and reduce anthropogenic threats to Pacific humpback whales, blue whales, beaked whales, and California gray whales. At this event, you’ll hear firsthand from each grant recipient about their research and their findings to date.

Kelly DeForest, an M.S. student at San Francisco State University, is the recipient of our inaugural Isidore Szczepaniak Cetacean Research Grant. Kelly is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Geographic Information Science and Cartography program at San Francisco State University. Kelly’s research aims to inform how oceanographic variability and climate change impacts migratory patterns of baleen whales in the Santa Barbara Channel (SBC), and how human-whale geographies may be altered by shifts in migration timing. To explore these relationships, they are analyzing 20 years of humpback, blue, and gray whale sightings collected by the Channel Islands Naturalist Corps. With these data, they will use statistical modeling methods to examine inter-annual and long-term trends in the arrival and departure of baleen whales to and from the SBC, as well as fine-scale habitat use in relation to environmental variables. They also plan to explore the capacity of environmental variables to predict migration timing and habitat use. The results of this research will assist in guiding future vessel speed reduction timing in the SBC and inform policy measures to reduce vessel strike risk.

Bekah Lane, a Ph.D. student at San Francisco State University, is the recipient of the 2021 Jonathan Stern Cetacean Research Grant. Currently, as a graduate student in Dr. Ellen Hines’ lab, she studies the risk of ship strikes to humpback whales in San Francisco Bay. Her thesis, “Whales in a Highly Urbanized Estuary: Evaluating Risk of Ship Strike to Humpback Whales in San Francisco Bay,” aims to create a model for ship strike risk to humpback whales to inform management decisions for vessels in the bay.

Allison Payne, a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is the recipient of our inaugural Christine Fitzsimmons Cetacean Research Grant. Her research involves instrumenting northern elephant seals with acoustic recorders to listen for beaked whales in the North Pacific Ocean.

It will be enlightening and gratifying to hear from these young scientists on risks associated with vessel strikes, entanglements, and bycatch mortality as well as how their research can help to minimize detrimental human impact.