Ben Aland is starting his field work flying drones to map oyster reefs along South Carolina shorelines. He is engaged in a full-time summer internship with the SC Department of Natural Resources to develop best practices for aerial drone data collection and post-processing to determine the spatial extent of oysters. This week he is flying drones and conducting ground truthing at low tide on Folly river. It's muddy work, but someone's gotta do it. Great job Ben! Marine science undergraduate student Ana Bishop just published her UofSC Honor's Thesis in Frontiers in Marine Science. The publication is open access and available for download here. This paper is one of the first studies to show that family linkages in the endangered North Atlantic right whale can explain reproductive success and habitat use. Around 2015, right whales shifted there distribution, and now about 40% visit the Gulf of St. Lawrence each summer. This shift made a great natural experiment to examine the relationship between habitat use patterns, family structure and reproductive success. Ana's work shows that right whales are much more likely to use the new Gulf of St. Lawrence habitat if their mother also uses this new habitat. Adult females that use the Gulf of St. Lawrence have also had much higher reproductive success in the past 6 years than females that do not use this new habitat. This study will help scientists and managers better understand changes in right whale habitat use, and how these changes will influence population growth. Great work Ana! |
AuthorErin Meyer-Gutbrod is an Assistant Professor at the University of South Carolina. Her lab researches human impacts to marine ecosysems. Archives
April 2024
Categories |