Dr. Bruce Mate and his staff use state-of-the-art satellite-monitored radio tags to study the migratory pathways, critical habitats and behaviors of endangered great whales. This year's studies resulted in discoveries that dramatically increased the current level of knowledge about several species.

In March 2001, tags were applied to fin whales and blue whales in the Sea of Cortez. The main purpose of the fin whale study was to gather any data that would help determine whether these animals are resident in the Sea of Cortez, or whether they migrate in and out of the Pacific. The tags on the fin whales transmitted for up to five months, allowing us to track these animals for a total of 11,185 miles. During that time, none of the fin whales in the study left the Sea of Cortez.

A female blue whale with a calf was tagged during this same study; her tag allowed us to track her for 213 days and 7,305 miles. She did not migrate to the known summer feeding area off California as was expected, but instead spent the summer feeding west of Baja California and in particular off Punta Eugenia. Since it was thought that the Eastern North Pacific stock of blue whales spent the summer feeding season off California, this discovery may mean that the population and calving rates of this stock, which is counted by ship and aerial surveys off the California coast, have been underestimated.

In August 2001 Dr. Bruce Mate and his staff successfully tagged a Gulf of Mexico sperm whale and eventually compiled the world's first detailed data on a sperm whale's movements. These data showed that 1) the whale stayed near the 1,000-meter contour; 2) it never left the Gulf of Mexico during 165 days and 5,116 miles of tracking; and 3) after months of staying in the area off the mouth of the Mississippi, it eventually migrated in a counterclockwise direction around the Gulf of Mexico into the Gulf of Campeche. When presented at an informational transfer meeting, these data caught the attention of the gas and oil industry, which has a vested interest in establishing whether marine mammals change their movements or behaviors in response to the acoustics used to detect seafloor oil and gas resources. Until now, the industry has found no objective means of measuring possible effects of acoustical surveys on normal whale movements. As a result, the International Association of Geophysical Contractors (IAGC) has entered into a collaborative study with OSU, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, and Texas A&M University to tag and track up to 20 sperm whales in the Gulf of Mexico during July 2002, and to monitor possible changes in their movements during acoustic tests run by an IAGC survey ship.

In September 2001, the group tagged 21 southern right whales in two separate locations off the south and east coasts of South Africa. The tags transmitted for up to 137 days, with the longest whale track being 4,362 miles. Before this study began, the only record of a southern right whale anywhere other than the coast of South Africa was a single photograph taken near Bouvet Island in 1995-now we have detailed tracklines for thousands of miles. In the first few weeks, five of the whales migrated south in parallel corridors away from South Africa. Four animals appeared to go to the edge of Antarctic sea ice; three went north to an area associated with old whaling grounds. Juxtaposition of tracklines over seafloor topography revealed that the whales are moving over undersea ridges and that three of the whales crossed the exact same ridge at different times.

Two things that this study proved immediately were: 1) the animals from the two tagging locations are not different stocks as was previously surmised (some of the tagged animals moved from one tagging area to the other); and 2) some animals never left the coastal area, staying throughout the summer feeding season. This means that South Africa is now the first known location for studying feeding right whales in the southern hemisphere, and is also an example of animals moving back into an area where they were once abundant before whaling reduced their numbers.