Pilots of the Deep

Long-finned pilot whales roam in large pods with hundreds of individuals and cluster in smaller groups like this one, photographed in the Alboran Sea during a WHOI research expedition in 2011. Because of the whales’ offshore, deep-diving lifestyle, we know little about them. WHOI postdoctoral fellow Frants Jensen and WHOI/MIT Joint Program graduate student Nicholas Macfarlane launched a new expedition to the Strait of Gibraltar in August 2013, using non-invasive DTAGs developed at WHOI. The tags record whale movements and sounds in the deep, offering new insights into their ecology, behavior, and social interactions.(Photo by Frants Jensen, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution under National Marine Fisheries Service Permit #14241)