Nowacek Lab

Why are whales eating plastic bags? They may ‘sound’ like dinner.

Greg Merrill Jr. — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 02:38:02 +0000

Deep-diving toothed whales wash up dead with stomachs full of plastic and prey alike. Their built-in sonar likely can’t tell the difference.

Check out Nowacek Lab Member Dr. Greg Merrill’s research feature in National Geographic HERE.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/plastic-whales-echolocation-deep-sea

The Over-whale-ming Plastic Problem

Greg Merrill Jr. — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 14:50:41 +0000

Second year PhD student Greg Merrill discusses various impacts of plastic pollution in this article written for the New Security Beat, a blog for the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program.

A New Population of Blue Whales Was Discovered Hiding in the Indian Ocean

Greg Merrill Jr. — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 14:19:55 +0000

Lab Member Charles Muirhead coauthors a paper identifying a new population of Blue Whales! Check out the New York Times article to learn more about how the team used acoustic data to distinguish the previously unidentified population.

U.S. Navy Highlights Behavioral Response Study

Greg Merrill Jr. — Mon, 01 Jun 2020 20:55:46 +0000

Check out this post to watch how the Nowacek Lab is working with the U.S. Navy to understand how varying levels of sonar exposure affect whale behavior!

Fight or flight? Pilot whales and Risso’s dolphins response to killer whale calls

arc83@duke.edu — Fri, 15 Jun 2018 13:56:45 +0000

What would you do if you heard the call of a hungry killer whale? Would you stay to fight or would you swim as fast as you could in the other direction? Not sure? Find out how short-finned pilot whales and Risso’s responded in our newest paper Selective reactions to different killer whale call categories in two delphinid species.

Check it out in the Economist

Or read the paper

Engineering Students Seek a Better Way to Track Endangered Marine Mammals

dpn3@duke.edu — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 15:10:30 +0000

Last spring, Duke undergraduates Ashley Blawas (Biomedical Engineering), Brandon Dalla Rosa (Electrical & Computer Engineering) and Sam Kelly (Mechanical Engineering) received a Follow-on Student Research Award to improve on the research methods employed by their Bass Connections team History and Future of Ocean Energy.

Mentored by Douglas Nowacek, they aim to produce a digital acoustic recording tag (used for recording sounds and making behavioral measurements of diving marine mammals) that can be powered by the triboelectric effect, in which certain materials become charged through friction with a different material.

Read full article here

XPRIZE: Duke’s High Capacity Drones and Drop Pods

nia3@duke.edu — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 18:41:28 +0000

The Blue Devil Engineering team based out of Duke University is using drones, drop pods and machine learning to map the seafloor. Led by Professors Martin Brooke, Tyler Bletsch and Douglas Nowacek, the team is an enthusiastic group of high school, undergraduate and graduate students working together to develop their solution in classes and in their free time.

Their solution involves mapping the target area using a more than 100-element grid of water columns, in which each column is being mapped using a lightweight SONAR pod. The pod will be dropped into the ocean from a heavy lift drone into the center of the column and will then collect SONAR data for the column as it descends. Once it reaches the bottom, the pod ascends to the surface to be picked up by the drone while transmitting the collected information. The drone then drops the pod to another location to start the process again. The SONAR data will be processed as it is obtained via cloud-based servers to generate a bathymetry map.

Read more about the Shell XPrize and team lead by Dr. Nowacek on page 34

Plans for Seismic Surveys off NC Coast

nia3@duke.edu — Tue, 05 Sep 2017 14:33:21 +0000

In this Feb. 2009 photo provided by the New England Aquarium, a North Atlantic right whale swims with her calf in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the United States near the border between Florida and Georgia.

Shooting air guns into the ocean could soon be fair game in the search for oil and gas along the North Carolina coast, even if the seismic blasts “harass marine mammals” such as whales.

The National Marine Fisheries Service is considering allowing the practice by energy companies and wants the public to weigh in.

“Seismic blasting” is a controversial technique using air guns to explore and map offshore oil and gas reserves deep beneath the ocean floor. They are towed behind ships, shooting loud blasts of compressed air deep into the seabed. These blasts can be repeated every 10 seconds for days to weeks at a time.

Dr.’s Nowacek and Read submitted comments opposing the surveys along with a consortium of scientists from the East Coast. Learn more about the plans here

Hot off the press: Studying cetacean behaviour: new technological approaches and conservation applications

amb162@duke.edu — Thu, 08 Sep 2016 13:43:50 +0000

Animal behaviour can provide valuable information for wildlife management and conservation. We describe several methods developed by marine mammal scientists to study behaviour, primarily of cetaceans, focusing on technological advances: unmanned aerial systems (UAS), satellite-linked telemetry, passive acoustics and multisensor high-resolution acoustic recording tags. We then go on to explain how the data collected by these methods have contributed to and informed conservation actions.

Check out the paper here.

‘Bio-duck’ sound mystery solved!

amb162@duke.edu — Thu, 24 Apr 2014 19:28:13 +0000

Antarctic minke whale. Photo by Ari S. Friedlaender

For a half century a sound heard in the Southern Ocean and beyond has baffled acousticians. The noise – nicknamed “the bio-duck” – appears in the winter and spring. The repetitive, low frequency noise has been recorded many times in the waters around the Antarctic and western Australia. Our paper has solved the mystery and opened many questions about the source – the minke whale!

Check out the BBC story