The Whalenerd‘s Podcast

Slater is back! We caught up this winter in Maui and had a nice chat about our impressions and experience on the island for the first time in several years. Also we may or may not be bird nerds instead of whale nerds these days...

Katlyn and Chelsi chat about east coast humpbacks! Chelsi Napoli is currently a PhD candidate at Stony Brook University in the Thorne Lab. In the lab, she studies the health and conservation of humpback whales in the New York Bight. She uses drone photogrammetry to assess body condition of New York Bight humpback whales inter-annually and across foraging grounds, and to model the growth relationsh...

Katlyn is back from Antarctica with more stories from her time as an expedition guide this season. Hear about sightings of penguins, seals and whales as well as some of the challenges Antarctica is facing.

Katlyn shares some of her encounters and adventures working in Svalbard this past summer.

We had special guest Kayah George, a Coast Salish matriarch in training, on this week to chat about some of her passions and knowledge about killer whales and the waters around what we now call British Columbia. 

This week's episode we had Alex Brash join us to talk about his new book: A Whaler at Twilight: A True Account of Whaling and Redemption in the South Pacific. We chatted about the family history that led up to writing the book, whaling history, conservation and more!

This is the last episode of Antarctica trip reports! Hear about Katlyn's adventures in Argentina during her break, and the last two trips of the season. Hundreds of whales, seals and penguins - even South of the Antarctic Circle! It's not the winter (summer?) she expected, but it is a winter to remember.

With some down time from the ship, Katlyn took an adventure in Chile with her family before embarking again for the Southern Ocean. Hear about her trips with a new species of penguin, seals, boat rides and more. Her last South Georgia combo trip was also quite challenging in the midst of site closures on the island due to avian flu.

Three Antarctic Peninsula trips in one month. Whew! It was a lot but there were so many whales and cool science! Hear more about Katlyn's time in the ice and what it's like to spend Christmas and New Year's in the Drake Passage.

As avian flu continued to spread on the island of South Georgia, trips became more challenging. Listen to Katlyn's stories of the next month worth of trips in this region and how things developed on the island for the summer season. She also had some awesome whale sightings - including killer whales twice!

After a small break - Katlyn is back with updates from the Southern Hemisphere. Hear about her first trip of the season to South Georgia and Antarctica. More to come!

Katlyn gives a review of the last part of her Alaska season and talks about a few bonus trips at the end.

Katlyn gives a mid season update on her Alaska summer. The ship she is on is covering the Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands and SE Alaska. Hear about whales in remote places, visiting the Pribilolfs and more! She also got a whale named after her. 

Killer whales are winning the summer of 2023 online. In the midst of heavy news coverage of the Iberian orcas interacting with boats making headlines - memes and tiktoks have gone viral about the events. We have covered this topic several times in the past, but with new data we decided to revisit the topic. There are up to 15 Iberian orcas interacting with boaters near the coast of Spain and Portu...

After a longer break Katlyn is back with a recap episode from the spring trips and her first month at sea in Alaska. Listen in for a detailed recap of the two Monterey Bay trips and an overview of the Alaska route she traveled in May and June. There is also a small tribute to the late Roger Payne at the end of the episode.

This week we checked in on the North Atlantic Right Whale breeding season. Meet the moms for this season and a little about their history!

There are multiple breeding areas off the Western North Pacific Ocean where humpback whales go to breed in the winter. We covered a recent paper that covers the use of Japanese waters by humpbacks in more detail.

We were so excited to talk to Belén for this episode about her work in Iceland. Belén is a marine biologist, wildlife guide, and sailor who works in the whale watching industry and runs a non profit focused on ocean conservation and education. She has also been an integral part of establishing the first Hope Spot in Iceland.

Slater is back from his safari trip to Kenya! After talking about whale sightings and safari sightings we chat about how hippos are indeed distant cousins of whales, how scientists figured that out, and what adaptations hippos and whales have to live their semi aquatic and marine lives.

This week Katlyn takes us through some information about humpback whale migration patterns in the Southern Hemisphere. After Slater came back from Tonga last summer we have been wanting to learn more about how the whales use Antarctica and travel between the feeding and breeding grounds.  Katlyn also added in a little snippet of whale song from Maui this season for you to enjoy during the sighting...

Happy New Year! Several birthing events for large whales in the North Pacific have been documented this winter. So we did a recap of the latest events in Mexico and California. We also covered a paper that gathered up reports over the past few decades of humpback whale births around the world.

This is our last episode of 2022. We talked through an early season update for Maui with some data from NOAA, observations on the water, and some news updates on Moon the humpback whale.

This week we get caught up on a few updates for everyone, including sharing some gratitude for you all. We are so grateful to everyone that listens to and supports the podcast! Also we chat about some interesting patterns of humpback whales moving around the Eastern North Pacific using some data from Happywhale and our observations on the water.

This week we had guest Andy Rogan on from Ocean Alliance. Andy is the Science Manager for the Ocean Alliance SnotBot program. We chatted about new technologies in whale research, drones and of course whale snot!

Whale sightings have still been going strong as whales are working their way South for winter season in the Northern Hemisphere. Katlyn took a trip to New York last week to be a part of the Safina Center annual gala event. We are so grateful to them for supporting the podcast this year. While she was there she went whale watching out of Brooklyn, so we took a little time to learn more about the wh...