09/28/2026
A new study, co-authored by Ocean Alliance’s Chris Zadra, combined high-resolution biologging tags, underwater video, and machine learning to identify feeding behavior in critically endangered North Atlantic right whales.
This was a collaborative effort led by Dalhousie University, The University of New Brunswick, NOAA, and Ocean Alliance. During the 2024 field season which we were a part of, Chris helped deploy the research team deploy 20 tags, including several tags which stayed on the whales for over 24 hours and a record-setting 38-hour tag deployment.
The results revealed previously undocumented feeding close to the surface at night, behavior that traditional methods based on dive patterns can miss. This matters because whales feeding near the surface can be particularly vulnerable to vessel strikes, especially when their presence and behavior are difficult to detect.
The study also demonstrates the growing power of tags to turn individual tag deployments into detailed information about whale behavior, feeding effort, and risk.
Thanks to Jay Kirkham for publishing this important work, and to Kim Davies and Sarah Fortune for inviting Ocean Alliance to be a part of this study.
You can read the paper here:
Whales are at risk from human activities and behavioural information can be important for informing risk policy. Underwater behaviour is increasingly being characterised with camera tags. Here, we characterise the kinematic signature of endangered North Atlantic right whales during feeding in high-r...
