Humpback Whale Research

Costa Rica.  Although Hawaii is well known as a calving and courtship site for humpback whales, two areas in the eastern Pacific have been show in recent years to be important as well - the Revillagigedos Islands off the tip of Baha California and along the Pacific coast of Costa Rica.  In collaboration with Cascadia Research, we have been surveying the waters off Costa Rica to look at numbers of whales and to obtain photographs of their flukes to compare with humpbacks throughout the north Pacific Ocean. 

A substantial portion of the animals photographed have been sighted elsewhere during migration or on foraging grounds in the far north Pacific which is shedding light on the migration routes and population structure of the Pacific humpback whales.  A recent assessment of the 'endangered' status of humpbacks concluded that that they should remain on the list, but it also underscored the importance of understanding humpback population structure as well as documenting trends in the numbers of individuals in each population - both are central goals of this study.