foraging decisions in pilot whale families

Pilot whales are cosmopolitan, occurring in all the world’s tropical and temperate oceans. These highly social whales eat a great variety of prey in these varied oceans while trying to stay together with their lifelong, family-based social groups. To do this, they must coordinate their behavior at the surface and throughout their deep foraging dives.

Hear about current research on pilot whales in North Carolina and around the world as we explore the lives of these amazingly flexible deep divers, the strategies that make them successful in so many places, and how they coordinate their groups throughout their daily movements.

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About our expert

Anne Harshbarger is a PhD candidate in Marine Science & Conservation in the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. Anne is broadly interested in collective movement ecology, group decision-making, and other social processes that could impact cetaceans’ resilience to conservation threats. My dissertation research focuses on group coordination and individuals’ influence over group decision-making during foraging dives in groups of short-finned and long-finned pilot whales. Using digital acoustic tags (DTAGs) and unoccupied aircraft systems (UAS, or drones), she identifies factors that influence movement decisions whales make at several points throughout a dive – including horizontal movement at the surface, individual paths during foraging, and reunification with group members during ascent – allowing social groups to maintain cohesion over time.

Anne completed a B.S. in Environmental Sciences and Biology at Duke. Her undergraduate research with the Duke Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing Lab and the NOAA Hawaiian Monk Seal Research Program focused on the behavioral response of wildlife to UAS, with the goal of developing species-specific best practices for the use of UAS as a tool for conservation research.

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