Research on the R/V Seawolf: Humpback whales and other species of whales and dolphins are among the many sea creatures in the Hudson Canyon, a deep submarine valley in the Atlantic located off New York City and Long Island in a region fed by the Gulf Stream and the Hudson River known as the New York Bight. A team of researchers in the Thorne Lab, Nye and Warren labs at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) began the first of a of series of multi-year research cruises on the R/V Seawolf in 2018 to better understand the ecosystem of the New York Bight, funded by the NY Department of Environmental Conservation with permits for cetacean research from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). Julia Stepanuk, a PhD student in Dr. Lesley Thorne’s lab, took this photo as part of her dissertation research which is using drones to study the body condition and foraging behavior of humpback whales. For more about the marine mammals observed on the first research cruise in this study, see this blog post by Stepanuk and SBU PhD student Alex Borowicz. For more about SoMAS, ranked by College Magazine in 2018 as one of best colleges for Marine Biology studies, see this website.
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