By MARK FLOYD OSU News & Communications
A team of scientists from Russia and the United States has successfully tagged and is tracking by satellite a whale from one of the world’s most endangered populations – a western gray whale off the coast of Russia’s Sakhalin Island.
The tagging component was led by Bruce Mate, director of Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute and a pioneer in the use of satellites to track whales since the late 1970s.
“Not a lot is known about western gray whales, so finding out where they migrate to breed and calve will be a tremendous step forward,” said Mate, whose 37-year OSU career has taken him around the world to study threatened and endangered whales.
There are only about 130 western gray whales left, scientists say, and only about 30-35 of them are mature, reproductively active females. The project is important because although the whales’ feeding grounds in the Russian Far East are known, details of their migration routes and breeding grounds are not.
