Our field season got off to a rough.  Dan Olsen filled in, starting our early fieldwork in April and early May, using our research vessel the R.V. Natoa in Kenai Fjords and Resurrection Bay.  He documented the arrival of  the AD and AK pods,  an annual spring event here… possibly one of the most predictable of wildlife events.  These pods (and sometimes others) come every year for a month or more to eat the succulent Chinook or king salmon that pass through the region in May and early June.  The tourboat skippers out of Seward, Alaska look forward to sighting the whales in calm waters on a daily basis.  These whales are quite used to the attention of the tour boats each spring.  The boats are well trained to observe them, but not disturb them(see below).  The whales get more and more relaxed as they feed daily on the Chinook, probably their first source of abundant salmon for the year... [READ MORE]

Along with its regular work advising the government, the federal Marine Mammal Commission was to review evidence "that rogue packs of killer whales" are wiping out discrete populations of the most endangered marine mammals. [READ MORE]

"In the ongoing debate over what's causing the decline of Alaska's Steller sea lions, researchers have studied everything from nutritional stress to climate change. Now researchers have turned their attention to killer whales. As Doug Schneider reports in this week's Arctic Science Journeys Radio, scientists say the chance to see if killer whales are eating too many sea lions is also a chance to learn more about killer whales themselves." - Doug Schneider [READ MORE]