Make Way for Whales

A pod of long-finned pilot whales surface in the busy Strait of Gibraltar. The whales are the focus of a joint study by scientists from WHOI and CIRCE (Conservación, Información y Estudio sobre cetáceos). A team that includes MIT-WHOI graduate student Nicholas Macfarlane and post-doc Frants Jensen spent August tagging pilot whales in the strait in order to study social dynamics within and between groups, feeding strategies of individuals and groups, and how human-generated noise in the strait affects whale behavior.(Photo by Frants Jensen, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)