Cascadia Research Collective

02/06/2026

Want to see where our tagged spinner dolphins are going? We've added a "live" map to our project web page where you can see two days of data (with a one-day delay) - check it out at https://cascadiaresearch.org/hawaii-update/mayjune2026/ (and check back every two days as the map updates, or you'll miss movements).

Today was day 3 on the water for our project. Over the last two days we've encountered short-finned pilot whales, bottlenose dolphins, saw a Blainville's beaked whale breaching in the distance, and found another group of spinner dolphins, and deployed our third tag for the trip.

We also documented a Streaked Shearwater, a species normally found only in the western Pacific - this was the first time we've ever photographed this species in Hawaiian waters!

This project is a collaborative effort with the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program and is funded by a grant from Dolphin Quest

31/05/2026

Today was the first day on the water for our Kona field project, a collaborative effort with the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program. One of the main goals is to deploy finmount satellite tags on spinner dolphins (as well as pantropical spotted and bottlenose dolphins) to examine movements and behavior around this island. We had a very successful day, deploying one SPLASH tag (which records dive behavior) and one SPOT tag (which provides location information) on individual spinner dolphins in two different groups off north Kona. This is the first time satellite-linked tags have ever been deployed on spinner dolphins off this island (we tagged them off O'ahu and Lāna‘i last year), and only the third SPLASH tag on a spinner. We are exciting to watch the movements of these individuals over the next few weeks and will share more information from these tags here and on our project web page - https://cascadiaresearch.org/hawaii-update/mayjune2026/

The photos here are from today and show a small group of spinners including one leucistic individual, one of our tagged individuals with a companion, and a spinner dolphin with a failed cookie-cutter shark bite wound through the dorsal fin.

29/05/2026

As we start to see seal pups in Southern Puget Sound, NOAA Fisheries West Coast provides great reminders on what NOT to do when you see these wonderful pups. Thank you for your continued support!

27/05/2026

Yesterday, Emma Stock, a student in the Master of Environmental Studies Program at The Evergreen State College here in Olympia, presented her thesis work on “Mouthline and dorsal fin injuries as an indicator of fisheries interactions in pygmy killer whales around the main Hawaiian Islands”.

Using our Hawai‘i photo-identification catalog of pygmy killer whales, Emma found that ~18.5% of individuals had dorsal fin injuries and 23.4% of individuals had mouthline injuries that were consistent with being hooked and/or struggling against hook and line gear. Injuries in pygmy killer whales do not re-pigment, so scars are particular easy to detect. This is the first comprehensive assessment of such fishery-related injuries in this species and suggests that depredation behavior may be widespread throughout the resident and offshore populations. This is a poorly-known species that feeds primarily at night, so determining which fisheries they may be interacting with will not be easy.

Congratulations to Emma for finishing her Master’s thesis!

If you want to learn more about pygmy killer whales, check out https://cascadiaresearch.org/hawaii-species/pygmy-killer-whales-hawaii/

26/05/2026

Over the last 28 years we have been working on the water in Hawai'i learning about whales and dolphins and the environment that is so important to both marine mammals and humans to thrive and raise their families. Through our research we have tracked individual whales and dolphins and been able to show that many of these species are highly dependent on specific locations around the islands to find their food, rest, and reproduce. We feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to do this work and pass along their stories through presentations and publications, which in turn can be used to protect these species and their environment.

Here is where you come in. We are facing an alarming decrease in our funding and we are inviting you to help us continue to learn about these species and to help protect them. Whales and dolphins in Hawaiian waters face many threats, from warming oceans to entanglements, and without long-term data collection we could lose one of these populations without even knowing that they were gone.

We know that there is a lot of need out there from non-profit organizations, and we appreciate any support you can provide!

23/05/2026

Big thanks to the American Cetacean Society-Puget Sound Chapter for hosting this event, and for providing a recording for those who weren't able to attend. CRC's John Calambokidis discusses 'Gray whales in crisis'.

For those who weren't able to join us for our May 5th meeting with John Calambokidis of the Cascadia Research Collective, we have uploaded the video recording of the meeting to your YouTube page. Please see below and subscribe to the channel for future updates.

20/05/2026

Remoras are not benign hitchhikers - this one did a lot of damage to a bottlenose dolphin off Lāna‘i in 2017, and the dolphin spent a lot of time trying to get rid of the remora

14/05/2026

[Update May 28, 2026: A recording of the "Plight of the Grey Whales" webinar is at https://mersociety.org/news-media/all/plight-of-grey-whales-call-to-action]

Please join us.
To aid the awakening about the need for action for Grey Whales, we will host a free webinar on May 27th, starting at 7 pm. Concerns for Grey Whales include the number found dead and emaciated, and the increased risk of collision.

We are very grateful for the great expertise joining us:

John Calambokidis is the senior Research Biologist and founder of the Cascadia Research Collective. Cascadia's work includes conducting necropsies on the Grey Whales found dead in Washington State.

Wendy Szaniszlo, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, has studied Grey Whales in BC for over 20 years in various capacities.

Paul Cottrell is Fisheries and Oceans Canada's Marine Mammal Coordinator on the Pacific coast. Paul will be sharing what is known of the known dead Grey Whales off the coast of B.C.

MERS Research Associates, Ashley Hoyland and Mark Sawyer of Whales of Clayoquot & Barkley, study the body condition of Grey Whales off SW Vancouver Island.

Details and registration at: https://www.zeffy.com/en-CA/ticketing/webinar-plight-of-grey-whales

The event will be recorded and shared with those who registered.

14/05/2026

Last night there was a panel discussion on the Budd Inlet Six, a group of Bigg's killer whales that were captured in March 1976 right here in Olympia. The whales were released after concerted efforts and legal action from the State of Washington, led by Ralph Munro, then an aide to Governor Dan Evans.

Cascadia's Robin Baird, who did his PhD work on mammal-eating killer whales, participated in the discussion, along with former state Senator Karen Fraser and former assistant state attorney general Wayne Williams. A recording of the panel discussion is available at https://www.tvw.org/watch/?clientID=9375922947&eventID=2026051108 if you are interested in watching it.

This photo, taken 16 years later in July 1992, is of one of the whales that was captured in Budd Inlet. This individual, designated as O4 at the time (and later renamed T14) was a regular visitor to the area for the next ~25 years.

12/05/2026

Killer whales in Hawai'i? A new paper was just published in Marine Mammal Science on “Killer whales in the central tropical Pacific: occurrence, resightings, morphology, and acoustics”.

The results of this study show that killer whales are found in Hawaiian waters year-round, with sightings primarily in deeper waters (>1,000 m), and feed on a diversity of prey including other species of dolphins and small whales, bony fishes, and sharks. Given they spend the majority of their time in deep water, they are unlikely to overlap much with endangered Hawaiian monk seals. From photographs taken both by researchers and citizen scientists, 113 individuals were identified, 15 of which were seen in two or more years, representing individuals from three different social groups. No matches with the much larger eastern tropical Pacific killer whale catalogs were found. Photographs were used to characterize the morphology of individuals, examining details of the eye patch, dorsal fin, and saddle patch, to assess the potential for multiple morphologically distinct populations in the central tropical Pacific. However, these analyses revealed considerable within-group variation in all of these traits, suggesting that there may just be a single central tropical Pacific population. This study is the first to characterize vocalizations across multiple observed groups within this population, including high-frequency modulated whistles that may be the killer whales’ primary means of within-group communication.

This was a collaborative effort with researchers from the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center and the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, with citizen science contributions from 18 different individuals and groups over the years!

The paper is open access and available at https://doi.org/10.1111/mms.70197 or from our website