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Full Title: Long-term Assessments of Rice’s Whales for Endangered Species Recovery Planning
This project will use passive acoustic monitoring, physical oceanographic data, and acoustic tracking arrays to quantify relationships between trends in relative Rice’s whale density, oceanographic factors, and ambient noise to enhance understanding of the whale’s ecology and reduce uncertainty, improve management outcomes, and foster species recovery.
Lead Investigator: Melissa Soldevilla, NOAA Southeast Fisheries Science Center (melissa.soldevilla@noaa.gov)
Natural Resource Manager: Clay George, NOAA Fisheries Southeast Region; Tre Glenn, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM)
Project Team: Kaitlin Frasier (Scripps Institution of Oceanography), Lance Garrison (NOAA Southeast Fisheries Science Center), Adolfo Gracia (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México), Matthieu Le Henaff (NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory), Arturo Serrano (Universidad Veracruzana)
Collaborators:
Technical Monitors:
Federal Program Officer/Point of Contact: Caitlin Young (caitlin.young@noaa.gov)
Award Amount: $3,572,490
Award Period: January 2026 – December 2030
Why it matters: Rice’s whales (Balaenoptera ricei) are one of the most endangered large whale species on Earth, with their known distribution restricted to the Gulf. They are the Gulf’s only resident baleen whale, and there are likely fewer than 100 individuals remaining. The Gulf is highly industrialized and impacted by many human activities that pose a risk to Rice’s whales and their habitat, including vessel strikes, noise from energy exploration, oil spills, marine debris and fishing gear entanglement. This project will directly inform ongoing management efforts, including the development and implementation of a Rice’s whale recovery plan, marine spatial planning, changing oceans scenario planning, Endangered Species Act (ESA) consultations, and Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) permitting. A better understanding of Rice’s whale relative density trends, movements, and the oceanographic and anthropogenic drivers of these patterns is needed to understand and reduce threats to the whales and their habitat.
What the team is doing: The project will establish up to six long-term sites for passive acoustic monitoring of Rice’s whale calls and ambient noise, and in situ data collection of bottom temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen. The team will also deploy acoustic tracking arrays at long-term sites to assess the number of calling whales, individual whale behavior, and movement patterns at each site. This information will be used to quantify seasonal and interannual trends in relative Rice’s whale density, oceanographic factors, and ambient noise across sites.
Expected outcome: The project will develop products that inform Rice’s whale management, such as providing information on movement patterns to inform permitting and consultation activities associated with the shipping, energy, fishery, and defense sectors. It will also improve our understanding of habitat usage to develop noise reduction strategies.
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