WHOI Marine Mammal Center (MMC)

Marine Research Facility. (Photo by Jayne Doucette, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Necropsy suite in the Marine Research Facility, (Photo by Shelley Dawicki, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Necropsy of a dolphin in the Marine Research Facility necropsy suite. (Photo by Shelley Dawicki, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Researchers from several institutions converged at the new Marine Research Facility at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to perform necropsies on common and white-sided dolphins that stranded on Cape Cod in January 2006. Necropsies help scientists investigate the causes of marine mammal strandings. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Darlene Ketten in the necrospy suite in the Marine Research Facility. (Photo by Shelley Dawicki, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Marine mammal specialist Michael Moore and WHOI guest student Colby Moore (from the College of the Atlantic) prepare to examine a white-sided dolphin that had stranded and died on a beach in Wellfleet, Mass., in January 2008. Every year, researchers from around the world come to the specialized facilities at WHOI to perform necropsies and other post-mortem studies of marine creatures. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Julie Arruda at work in CT scan lab in the Marine Research Facility (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Scott Cramer preparing the beluga whale head for scanning. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Darlene Ketten watches as a turtle enters the CT scanner. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Biologist Peter Tyack (left) and senior engineer Mark Johnson have been working together to study whale behavior using Johnson's D-tag to record whale movements, depth, and sounds on dives. The tags are harmlessly suctioned on to the skin of whales for several days. Once they fall off and float to the surface, Johnson and colleagues take the tags back to the lab to read the story of the whales' dives—from their swimming behavior to the kinds of vocalizations they use while foraging. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Tagging of a Northern Right Whale in the Bay of Fundy using a cantilever pole. (Research was conducted under permit # 981-1707, BOF2001 issued by NMFS under the authority of the MMPA and the EPA.) (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

To learn how right whales feed, WHOI biologist Mark Baumgartner uses an 9-meter (29-foot) aluminum pole to gently place a tag on whales' backs. "After one to three hours, the tag comes off and floats to the surface, and we can pick it out of the water and download the data," he said. "We can then relate the whale's diving behavior to the abundance and depth of copepods," the whales' staple food. (Research was conducted under permit # #775-1600 issued by NMFS under the authority of the MMPA and the EPA.) (Photo by David Wiley, NOAA Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary)

The female finback whale stretched as long as the 60-foot research vessel Tioga. From its length, biologist Michael Moore estimated that the animal was young, between 13 and 16 years old. (Photo by Tim Voorheis, Gulf of Maine Productions)

Marine Research Facility. (Photo by Shelley Dawicki, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)