"Illuminating the path to marine ecosystem restoration requires knowledge of the marine realm's natural processes and how these have changed. We do this with real-time monitoring of sensitive marine habitats and species populations. The combination of scale and spatial data analysis available now may rapidly inform conservation and policy to halt degradation and start restoring marine ecosystems."

Some highly migratory orcas are changing their movement patterns, home ranges and habitat use. We don’t know if this is due to climate change, or the collapse of fisheries and the rise of new food sources, such as humpback whale calves, which have increased in number as the whale population recovers. One trend we have documented with photography is that humpback whale flukes have shown a steady increase in bite marks associated with orcas over the last few decades, suggesting that orcas may be increasing attacks on calves as a food source. We’re also looking at reports of possible increases of orca attacks on fish caught by commercial fishers. But to get at these questions we need to start with understanding their basic movement ecology: what are they eating, where are they moving, where they come from, and what are they doing? We need to work on the genetics and morphology of orca subspecies (or potentially separate species) and track whales with satellite technology.

Marine birds are apex predators and they are facing increasing competition from commercial fishers and the impact of climate change on their food sources. In the Eastern Tropical Pacific, an El Niño event can exacerbate these problems and lead to mass mortality and mass migration of groups of birds numbering in thousands. To address these issues, we need to understand the basic ecology and life histories of these birds. On islands in the ETP, we’re using drone technology to measure colony productivity along with satellite tracking tags to learn how far they must travel to find food sources.

Our preliminary research on coral reef habitats show dramatic changes in the marine soundscape as reefs transition from degraded to healthy. Healthier reefs have notably “better” sound that degraded ones, which tend to produce a dull whining sound. We have also deployed sonar technology to track behavior of manatees in threatened Caribbean populations. We are also deploying instruments to study how commercial ship traffic impacts communication and behavior of humpback whales.

I find that engaging policymakers directly is important since direct communication lines with authorities are important to decision-makers and nongovernmental organization focused on conservation might not necessarily have the ability to influence and inform policy on their own. Our role as scientists is to offer technical advice based on our best scientific research and to act as ambassadors for the importance of research in creating successful conservation policy.