Cetaceans of the North Coast: A Renewed Effort for Gray Whale Foraging Research - Norman - 12/13/23

The lecture’s title is “Cetaceans of the North Coast: A Renewed Effort for Gray Whale Foraging Research.” The speaker is Robyn Norman. This lecture was part of the Sequoia Park Zoo's 2023-2024 Conservation Lecture Series, hosted by the Sequoia Park Zoo’s Conservation Advisory Committee and sponsored by the Sequoia Park Zoo Foundation. These lectures are free for our community, and your donations to the Sequoia Park Zoo Conservation Fund make this possible. You can donate at www.RedwoodZoo.org/donate Talk synopsis: Eastern North Pacific Gray Whales make one the longest yearly migrations of any mammal, traveling over 16,000 kilometers round trip to the Arctic to feed on a diversity of invertebrates. By filtering water, sand, and sediment through their baleen, gray whales will consume thousands of these organisms every summer. However, a sub-group of this population chooses a different route, spending the summers feeding from Vancouver, Canada to our shared home in northern California. This Pacific Coast Feeding Group makes up less than 1% of the population, and they are seen in small numbers in northern California throughout the summer. While this group has been observed since the 1980s, we still have many unanswered questions about their presence in the area. Why are these whales in northern California? What are they eating? And what makes northern California special? Norman received a conservation grant from the Sequoia Park Zoo to begin answering some of these questions and will share her findings in this talk. Robyn Norman is a graduate student in the Department of Biological Sciences at Cal Poly Humboldt (CPH). Along with her team of CPH undergraduate students, she has been studying the foraging ecology of gray whales in northern California for over two years. She also studied gray whales in Oregon while earning her undergraduate degree at Oregon State University. #ConservationInAction #SequoiaParkZoo