Climate Change and Gray Whales

Climate change can occur naturally as well as driven by human activities. The impacts of climate change on large mobile organisms are often difficult to asses or predict. In this presentation, Dr. Jonathan Stern will discuss implications of climate change on the Eastern Pacific Gray Whales. These whales are seasonal migrants along theCaliforniaCoastand can be seen very close to shore. Research on these whales and their feeding grounds suggest a few scenarios that gray whales may face in the very near future. These scenarios will be the focus of this talk.

Speaker: Dr. Stern is a lecturer and adjunct professor in the Department of Biology atSan FranciscoStateUniversity. He has studied minke whales since 1980, and is currently a Co-Principal Investigator at Golden Gate Cetacean Research, studying harbor porpoises, bottlenose dolphins and minke whales in local waters of theSan franciscoBay. He has also studied gray whales, killer whales, fin whales, humpback whales, pilot whales. Dr Stern was also the first volunteer at theMarineMammalCenterwhen it first opened in 1975. He worked at NASA/Ames constructing a computer model to investigate the effects of climate change on CO2/O2 exchange in terrestrial plants. He misses playing bass in the Bert Wills Band when he lived inTexas, and playing guitar in "the Jungle Studs" a legendaryMarinCountyband.