Tagging Along: How Wearable Devices Have Transformed Our Understanding of Orcas’ Hunting Behavior

Join The Whale Museum on August 13 at 7:00 PM PT in-person or streaming on YouTube for another installment of the Summer Lecture Series. Dr. Jennifer Tennessen from the Center for Ecosystem Sentinels will be giving a speech entitled, “Tagging along: how wearable devices have transformed our understanding of orcas’ hunting behavior and the impacts of human disturbance.” This event is free and open to the public!

Whales spend most of their lives underwater, out of view of humans, presenting notable challenges for scientists trying to study important behaviors and elucidate relationships with human activities. In this presentation Dr. Tennessen will show how a suction cup-attached archival tag the size of a cell phone has revolutionized marine mammal behavioral ecology research and transformed our understanding of the secret lives of whales and dolphins. She will share findings from her studies of the underwater hunting behavior of resident orcas, focusing on how sound and movement information from biologging tags have revealed critical insights about how they pursue and capture salmon in the Salish Sea, and how noise from human activities reduces their chances of hunting success. Finally, she will discuss promising efforts underway that have the potential to quiet noisy waters, promoting foraging opportunities for Southern Residents.

Dr. Jennifer Tennessen is a Research Scientist in the Center for Ecosystem Sentinels at the University of Washington. She has spent two decades studying whales – advancing research at the interface of behavioral ecology, bioacoustics and marine conservation. Following a summer volunteering with The Whale Museum’s Soundwatch Boater Education Program, her fieldwork has taken her to the coastal waters of the southeast United States, the Bay of Fundy, and back to the Salish Sea. Currently, she studies foraging ecology of resident orcas and the consequences of human-generated vessel noise on foraging success. Jennifer holds a MS in Conservation Biology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a PhD in Ecology from The Pennsylvania State University.

You can learn more about her work at: https://ecosystemsentinels.org/jennifer-tennessen

You may also like the following events from The Whale Museum:

• This Thursday, 7th August, 09:00 am, 2025 Junior Marine Scientist Camp in Friday Harbor