We lead the marine mammal and seabird components of a long-term ecosystem monitoring program in the New York Bight funded by the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation. In addition to seasonal line transect surveys for seabirds and photo-ID studies of cetaceans, our research as part of this program focuses on:

Assessing the body condition of large whales using Unoccupied Aerial Systems (UAS), or drones;

and

Analyses of large whale habitat use via passive acoustic recorders aboard our autonomous underwater vehicles (gliders).

The broader monitoring project focuses on developing and monitoring ecosystem indicators for the New York Bight, and includes sampling of temperature, salinity, fluorescence, carbonate chemistry, as well as zooplankton and fish trawls and fisheries acoustics from both cross-shelf ship-based transects and glider missions. This project is a collaboration between our lab and the labs of Drs Charlie Flagg, Jack McSweeney, Janet Nye, Joe Warren and Roy Price.