• Juliana Stephan

    Juliana Stephan
    Univ of Washington
    Worked on how to identify North Pacific gray whales.

    This summer I had the amazing opportunity to do an internship with the California Current Ecosystems Program (NMML) as an Ernest F. Hollings scholar. I worked with my mentor Pat Gearin, as well as many other marine mammal biologists on the Eastern North Pacific gray whale examining how sighting/identification data could be represented or visualized over space and time using a geographic information system (GIS). I got to practice many analytical skills as well as learn about field techniques as I participated in three gray whale surveys off the northwest coast of Washington. Everything I learned and all the people I met and worked with will help me immensely as I pursue a career in marine mammal research.

    The gray whale population along the Eastern North Pacific has recovered from historic whaling and was taken off the U.S. Endangered Species list in 1994. Although most of the population migrates from the breeding and calving lagoons in Baja Mexico in the winter to the rich feeding grounds of the Bering Sea in the summer, there is a subset of the population known as the Pacific Coast Feeding Aggregation (PCFA) that feeds off the west coast of the United States and Canada over the summer. It is still important to study the distribution and abundance of gray whales in this area since the Makah Native American tribe on the northwest coast of Washington is planning on resuming subsistence whaling. It is part of NOAA's mission to determine the effects of this potential harvest, especially as it relates to the PCFA whales.

  • sighting

    My first whale! I got a nice ID photograph and it was matched as gray whale individual #94.


    As I participated in NMML's gray whale surveys off Neah Bay, Washington, I learned about and took part in photo-identification of individuals. For gray whales, individuals are identified by photographs of their left and right sides. Parasites such as barnacles and whale lice leave white distinctive markings that, along with scratches and other natural marks, allow individuals to be distinguished.

    Back at the AFSC in Seattle, I worked with a large database that contained over 10,000 gray whale identification records from 1998-2007 collected by 12 research groups from California to Southeast Alaska. I was able to plot these ID positions on ArcView and analyze changes in distribution over time. I also focused on several gray whale individuals and looked at their movements by year and by month. Along with this analysis I was able to create polygons that encompassed all the sightings in a given year. These polygons could then be investigated as the home range of the individual within a given year as well as to determine the level of site fidelity between years.

  • An example of the type of maps I was able to create. This shows gray whale #81 and its movements by month in 1999.


    My GIS analyses allowed me to come up with various conclusions about the distribution and movements of gray whales in the Pacific Northwest. I will now be able to focus on more quantitative analysis and make decisions as to how to structure my findings into a paper for my senior capstone project for the Aquatic & Fishery Sciences department at the University of Washington. I am extremely grateful to Pat Gearin, my mentor, as well as Merrill Gosho, Jeff Harris, and numerous other scientists that helped me during my internship project. This experience was very memorable and will be very valuable for future opportunities.

  • Here I am on the box platform of our research boat, trying to capture a photograph of a whale.

    Merrill (top) and Pat (bottom) on our gray whale survey off Neah Bay, WA looking for the blow of a gray whale.