I recently traveled to the Outer Banks in North Carolina to join colleagues from Duke University and the Cascadia Research Collective on field work focused on tagging pilot whales. I woke up early on a Sunday morning, sunscreen and windbreaker packed neatly, and drove the 8 hours from Stony Brook, New York to Manteo, North Carolina. I arrived to find the team of researchers preparing the vessel, the R/V Richard T Barber, for the next day’s trip. To tag and track whales, the weather needs to be close to perfect, but Cape Hatteras has a bit of a track record for having storms and big seas. Therefore we only had a small window of opportunity to get on the water and tag. Lo and behold, we made it 20 miles offshore on the first day only to realize that the seas were still too high to conduct good research. We were home to the dock by noon, allowing for a fantastic nap followed by some blackened fish tacos. We played the waiting game, hoping the seas would still enough for us, and our opportunity arrived the next day. We were off the dock at 5am, zooming out to our study site. Once we reached the shelf break, which was about 35 miles from our dock, the ocean came alive. It’s amazing to see the variation in ocean life from a vantage point above the water. I identified some Wilson’s storm petrels, greater shearwaters, and also saw my first audubon’s shearwater! We first spotted some offshore Tursiops, or bottlenose dolphins. I’ve never seen Tursiops of that size! Even feet above the water, while moving on the boat, I could hear the dolphins echolocating below as they were bowriding. Shortly after, we found our first short-finned pilot whales. To find out where short-finned pilot whales go, we use satellite tags, attached to the dorsal fin of the animal, for long-term tracking, which communicates the animals’ position to a satellite when the pilot whales break the surface. DTags are used to record more detailed data, including sounds produced by and received by the animal, the depth of the animal, the temperature of the water, and even the pitch and roll of the individual, over short time periods. On this particular field day, we deployed a four-hour Dtag using a long carbon-fiber pole to attach a suction cup tag to the whale’s back. Once the tag was attached, we used a VHF receiver to follow the pings produced when the tagged animal was near the surface. At the end of the four-hour deployment, the suction cups on the tag release, the tag came to the surface, and we retrieved the tag. Seeing all of this in person was an amazing experience, and I’m so excited to return for the next field season!