UH Hilo Pack Marine Mammal Lab

Aloha All,
To those who celebrate, Happy Passover and Easter! Tomorrow, April 6th is University of Hawai'i (UH) Giving Day! This is an opportunity to support programs of interest at University of Hawai'i including those that lead to research discoveries and student applied learning experiences. We at the UH Hilo Marine Mammal Laboratory would be honored if you would consider a charitable donation to support our groundbreaking studies of North Pacific humpback whales at this link https://give.uhfoundation.org/schools/UniversityofHawaiiFoundation/uh-giving-day-2026/pages/UHH/HumpbackWhale?campaign_view=true . Our goal is to reach $4,500 for a new long-term underwater recorder to help us monitor the full season of humpback whale song off Hilo Bay. To get things rolling, I will match the first $1,000 in donations.

As many of you know, I am Dr. Adam Pack, Professor in Psychology and Biology at University of Hawai’i at Hilo (UH Hilo) and Founder and Director of the UH Hilo Marine Mammal Laboratory https://hilo.hawaii.edu/faculty/adam-a-pack/marine-mammal-lab/ . I am also the Co-founder and President of The Dolphin Institute, a Hawai'i-based 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to dolphins and whales through education, research and conservation https://thedolphininstitute.org/ .

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the humpback whale project which was inaugurated in 1976 by my mentor, the late Dr. Lou Herman, UH Manoa professor emeritus and founder and director of the Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory. Over the last 50 years, together with hundreds of volunteers from around the world and scores of interns and graduate students, our whale project has made numerous discoveries of humpback whale behavioral ecology and communication both in the Hawaiian breeding grounds and the Alaskan feeding grounds resulting in scores of scientific publications. Our current work focuses on investigating the reproductive and physical health of humpbacks, as well as examining their various forms of vocal communication. To examine health, we are linking together data streams from measured body size and body condition with measurements of concentrations of reproductive hormones such as testosterone, total estrogen and progesterone, as well as metabolic hormones such as cortisol and corticosterone. To examine communication, we are using aerial drones to carefully place acoustic recording suction cup tags on the backs of the whales and then playing back whale vocalizations and other sounds. We are also continuing the project’s legacy of generating long-term life histories of individually-identified humpback whales. Such data provides invaluable baseline information on everything from calving rates to migratory trends and habitat use. Our archive, dating back to 1976 now contains over 30,000 identification images of well over 7,000 individually-identified whales, many of whom we have traced over decades including “Old Timer,” the oldest known living humpback whale in the world. Over the years, our findings on humpbacks have been featured broadly by the media including the recent PBS films "Mystery of the humpback whale song," "Humpback Health" and “Vanishing Whales”, as well as the PBS Kids "WildKratts" episode "Our Blue and Green World." To keep all of our research and applied learning experiences for students going strong, we rely heavily on the public's support. We would be grateful on this UH Giving Day for your contribution to our UH Foundation humpback whale fund https://give.uhfoundation.org/schools/UniversityofHawaiiFoundation/uh-giving-day-2026/pages/UHH/HumpbackWhale?campaign_view=true.

Mahalo for your continued interest in our work and for your generous support,

Adam

Aloha Friends and Supporters of The UH Hilo Marine Mammal Lab and Dolphin Institute (TDI),

Welcome to our end of the year wrap-up highlights! 2025 was a very productive and exciting year in research and education. Below, please find some of the highlights. Aside from these activities, we just announced our biennial request for college student proposals for the Louis M. Herman Student Research Scholarship. Every two years, there is a great competition for this award to support creative and groundbreaking student research that aligns with the themes of Dr. Herman’s pioneering work with dolphins or whales. We look forward to announcing the awardee on Dr. Herman’s birthday in April. Also, 2026 will mark the 50th anniversary of our whale project, one of the longest continuous studies of humpback whales in the world. As you will see below, we are continuing to make great strides in this work. We are also dedicated to completing the digitization of our entire humpback whale fluke catalog to share online in the automated matching program and multi-research group database entitled “Happy Whale.” If you are interested in supporting the TDI student scholarship and our research projects, please visit TDI’s donation page at https://thedolphininstitute.org/donate/ . In this time of substantial reductions in government grants, we very much appreciate all your support!

• Field Research Across Oceans: This year, TDI researchers ventured far and wide to conduct field research. During the spring, we traveled to Maui to collaborate with Dr. Marc Lammers, Research Ecologist for the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary on investigating humpback whale responses to underwater playback of various natural and anthropogenic sounds to learn about whale communication as well as whale impacts from vessel sounds. In June, we traveled to the Bahamas to collaborate with Dr. Denise Herzing, Founder and Research Director of the Wild Dolphin Project to continue our collaborative investigation of responses of Atlantic spotted dolphins to a human-dolphin acoustic communication interface. Finally, in July, we headed to Petersburg, Alaska to study the humpback whales from Hawaii in their feeding grounds. In addition to documenting individual humpbacks working cooperatively in bubble net feeding grounds to hunt herring, we encountered both resident killer whales and transients. The former were extraordinarily social performing synchronous behaviors as they tracked our vessel, and the latter were in the process of hunting Stellar Sea Lions.

• Dedicated Students Making Great Strides at UH Hilo Marine Mammal Laboratory:
This fall under the guidance of lab manager Dawn McSwain, we were blessed to have five students from UH Hilo working in our lab digitizing and preparing images of humpback whale tail flukes from individually-identified whales from our long-term archival catalog for uploading to “Happy Whale” a multi-research group database and automated matching system https://happywhale.com/home . This system has greatly facilitated large scale collaborations across the North Pacific and enhanced our ability to identify individual whales and their histories in real time while conducting field work. This fall, lab founder and director Dr. Adam Pack’s co-mentored Ph.D. student Megan McElligot successfully defended her doctoral thesis, “Spatial and temporal variation in acoustic activity of spinner dolphins (Stenella longirostris) during their daytime rest in the main Hawaiian Islands.” Congratulations Megan!
• New Publications and Reports: This year we co-authored four scientific publications and reports including “Movement and sound production in yearling humpback whales: Age-class comparisons,” in “Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology,” “Tending the sick: Epilmeletic behavior towards entangled conspecifics provides evidence of empathy in humpback whales,” in PLOS One,” “Age-specific body length, mass and energetic cost of grown in humpback whales,” in “Marine Ecology Progress Series,” and “Harnessing the power of photo-ID data for apportionment to migratory whale hers: U.S. West Coast humpback whale stock proportions by latitude for the period 2019-2024,” a U.S. Department of Commerce, NOAA Technical Memorandum.

• New Presentations: On December 2-3, TDI’s Dr. Adam Pack co-chaired sessions on "Animal Bioacoustics: Baleen Whale Acoustics" at the 6th Joint Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and the Japan Acoustical Society held in Honolulu. Pack presented the talk "Eavesdropping on a humpback whale male's song can provide information on its physical and reproductive condition." He was also a co-author on "Humpback whales in a population sing the same song-or do they? Assessing intra- and inter-individual song variability on the Hawaiian Breeding ground," "A comparison of humpback whale song structure between the Northwestern and main Hawaiian Islands," "Estimating bearings to low-frequency baleen whale calls with closely spaced hydrophones," "Lombard effect in humpback whales in Hawai'i is context and call-type dependent," and "The behavioral context in social call production by humpback whales on the Hawaiian breeding ground."

Aloha All,
I want to thank you for the outpouring of support to the UH Hilo Marine Mammal Laboratory on University of Hawai'i Giving Day!Through your generous contributions we were able to raise $2,475. These funds will be directed to support our many research projects allowing us to continue to provide new insights into humpback whale and dolphin behavioral ecology and communication. If you missed us on the official UH Giving Day, you can still make a charitable and tax deductible contribution through either our UH Foundation "Humpback Whale Fund Account" at this link: https://hilo.hawaii.edu/faculty/adam-a-pack/marine-mammal-lab/support.php
or through our non-profit arm, The Dolphin Institute at this link: https://thedolphininstitute.org/donate/

Once again, Thanks so very much for your incredible support!!

Mahalo,
Adam

Aloha Everyone,

Today’s the day! University of Hawai'i (UH) Giving Day has finally arrived! At this special opportunity to support programs at UH that lead to research discoveries and student applied learning experiences, please consider a charitable donation to support our groundbreaking studies of humpback whales and spinner dolphins at this link https://givingday.uhfoundation.org/giving-day/97249/department/104848 . So far, we have raised $1,450 which is nearly 1/3 of the way to our goal of $5,000.

I am Dr. Adam Pack, Professor in Psychology and Biology at University of Hawai’i at Hilo (UH Hilo) and Founder and Director of the UH Hilo Marine Mammal Laboratory. I have been studying dolphins and whales in Hawai’i for over 40 years first as the Associate Director of the University of Hawai’i’s Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory, and later through The Dolphin Institute, a Hawai’i based 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to dolphins and whales through education, research and conservation https://thedolphininstitute.org/ . In 2008, I founded the UH Hilo Marine Mammal Laboratory https://hilo.hawaii.edu/faculty/adam-a-pack/marine-mammal-lab/ Together with my students at UH Hilo and UH Manoa, I have been conducting groundbreaking studies on humpback whales in Hawaiian waters, carrying on the legacy of UH Manoa Professor Dr. Lou Herman who pioneered the scientific study of humpback whales in Hawaiian waters in 1976. In coordination with the lab's non-profit arm The Dolphin Institute, we have created one of the longest continuous studies of humpback whales and one of the richest and most extensive archives of humpback whale tail fluke identification photographs in the world.

• One of this year’s goals is to complete the migration of this rich and unique historical archive of individual whale life histories into the web-based North Pacific database and automated fluke matching program called Happy Whale https://happywhale.com , to both enhance and extend our ability to make new discoveries of life characteristics of the humpbacks and also to preserve our catalog for future generations. As an example of the power of Happy Whale, this past summer while I was studying our Hawai’i humpbacks in their Southeast Alaskan feeding grounds, I documented the oldest known living humpback whale in the world, a whale we call “Old Timer.” Happy Whale was instrumental in immediately providing the full life history of this whale all on my iphone so that I could share this information with participants aboard the expedition! https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/14/science/oldest-humpack-whale-old-timer.html

Over the past decade, we have expanded our research program through collaborations to develop an even greater understanding of humpback whales. We have been conducting suction cup tagging of the whales to learn about their activities, energetics and vocalizations. and we have amassed one of the largest archives of humpback whale tissue samples in Hawai'i. From the hundreds of samples collected, we are learning about humpback whale physical and reproductive health. We have also been playing back various sounds to the humpbacks to learn about the function of their communications as well as their hearing abilities.

Our latest findings have been featured in the PBS films "Mystery of the humpback whale song," "Humpback Health" and in the PBS Kids "WildKratts" episode "Our Blue and Green World."
In addition to humpback whales the UH Hilo Marine Mammal Laboratory studies the community of spinner dolphins off the Hilo coast focusing on the habitat use and residency patterns of the spinners both acoustically through long-term underwater digital recorders and through boat-based surveys in which we photograph individual dolphins and match their dorsal fin shapes to determine resightings. Finally, we have provided applied learning experiences and internship opportunities to hundreds of students training future generations of whale and dolphin researchers and ensuring that beyond our lives these marine mammals and their fragile marine habitats will continue to be studied and protected.

To keep all of these research and education efforts going strong, we rely heavily on the public's support. To make a charitable contribution to the UH Hilo Marine Mammal Laboratory, please visit our link here https://givingday.uhfoundation.org/giving-day/97249/department/104848 .From funds to support one or more of the remaining hundreds of analyses of our health bank of humpback whale biopsy tissue samples (cost = $75 per analysis), to a new go-pro underwater camera (cost = $499), to acquiring updated models of our spinner dolphin underwater Soundtrap recorders (cost = $4500 per recorder), any contribution is very much appreciated.

Mahalo!

Aloha Friends of the UH Hilo Marine Mammal Lab,
This Wednesday April 9 is University of Hawai'i Giving Day! This is an opportunity to support programs of interest at University of Hawai'i that lead to research discoveries and student applied learning experiences. Please consider a charitable donation to support our groundbreaking studies of humpback whales and spinner dolphins at this link https://givingday.uhfoundation.org/giving-day/97249/department/104848 .

I am Dr. Adam Pack, Professor in Psychology and Biology at University of Hawai’i at Hilo (UH Hilo) and Founder and Director of the UH Hilo Marine Mammal Laboratory. I have been studying dolphins and whales in Hawai’i for over 40 years first as the Associate Director of the University of Hawai’i’s Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory, and later through The Dolphin Institute, a Hawai’i based 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to dolphins and whales through education, research and conservation https://thedolphininstitute.org/ . In 2008, I founded the UH Hilo Marine Mammal Laboratory https://hilo.hawaii.edu/faculty/adam-a-pack/marine-mammal-lab/ . Together with my students at UH Hilo and UH Manoa, I have been conducting groundbreaking studies on humpback whales in Hawaiian waters, carrying on the legacy of UH Manoa Professor Dr. Lou Herman who pioneered the scientific study of humpback whales in Hawaiian waters in 1976. In coordination with the lab's non-profit arm The Dolphin Institute, we have created one of the longest continuous studies of humpback whales and one of the richest and most extensive archives of humpback whale tail fluke identification photographs in the world. We have also provided applied learning experiences and internship opportunities to hundreds of students. Over the past decade, we have expanded our program to develop an even greater understanding of humpback whales. We have been conducting suction cup tagging of the whales to learn about their activities, energetics and vocalizations. and we have amassed one of the largest archives of humpback whale tissue samples in Hawai'i. From the hundreds of samples collected, we are learning about humpback whale physical and reproductive health. We have also been playing back various sounds to the humpbacks to learn about the function of their communications as well as their hearing abilities. Our latest findings have been featured in the PBS films "Mystery of the humpback whale song," "Humpback Health" and in the PBS Kids "WildKratts" episode "Our Blue and Green World."

In addition to humpback whales the UH Hilo Marine Mammal Laboratory studies the community of spinner dolphins off the Hilo coast focusing on the habitat use and residency patterns of the spinners both acoustically through long-term underwater digital recorders and through boat-based surveys in which we photograph individual dolphins and match their dorsal fin shapes to determine resightings.

To keep all of these research and education efforts going strong, we rely heavily on the public's support. To make a charitable contribution to the UH Hilo Marine Mammal Laboratory, please visit our link here https://givingday.uhfoundation.org/giving-day/97249/department/104848 . From funds to support one or more of the remaining hundreds of analyses of our health bank of humpback whale biopsy tissue samples (cost = $75 per analysis), to a new go-pro underwater camera (cost = $499), to acquiring updated models of our spinner dolphin underwater Soundtrap recorders (cost = $4500 per recorder), any contribution is very much appreciated. Mahalo!

Aloha All,
Just back from my 17th summer studying humpback whales from Hawai’i and Mexico on their summer feeding grounds under NOAA Permit 29593. Our goals were to carry on the legacy of studies begun in 1980 by my mentor Dr. Louis Herman and his students in these same waters documenting the long-term life histories of individually-identified humpback whales, record their association patterns, and characterize their feeding behaviors. I along with Captain Harley, Chef Katie, Mates Ryan and Bart, and a wonderful team of eight eager participants including Ron Antinoja, one of the original researchers of humpbacks in Hawai'i with Lou (e.g. Herman & Antinoja, 1977), traversed calm seas in Frederick Sound, Stephens Passage and Chatham Strait where we documented the identities of over 200 humpback whales, some of them hunting herring in cooperative feeding groups using bubbles and feeding calls, and others singly using bubbles to corral krill. It was both exciting and heartwarming to recognize many of these whales as those I have seen in Alaska and Hawai’i over decades. Included among the bunch was a whale we call “Old Timer” first photographed as an adult by whale research pioneer Chuck Jurasz in Lynn Canal in 1972. That makes “Old Timer” at least 53 years old constituting the oldest known living humpback whale in the world, and one that was resilient in the face of the unprecedented North Pacific marine heatwave from 2014-2017 that devastated food resources humpbacks and other marine species rely on. Along our journey, we encountered calving glaciers and icebergs and spotted Stellar sea lions, Dall’s porpoises, harbor seals, black and brown bears, and adult and juvenile eagles. Now back in Hilo, Hawai’i my students, staff and I are processing the data eager to eventually share with you all our findings. Can’t wait for next summer’s adventures! All of this work takes place with support from the University of Hawai’i at Hilo Marine Mammal Lab, our non-profit organization The Dolphin Institute, and the leadership of Alaska Sea Adventure’s Northern Song. And the web based program “Happy Whale” provided us with the tools to be able to identify whales “in the moment.” With aloha and gratitude, Adam

Aloha,
Tomorrow, April 10, is University of Hawai'i (UH) Giving Day! This is an opportunity to support programs of interest at University of Hawai'i that lead to research discoveries and student applied learning experiences. Since 2008, the UH Hilo Marine Mammal Laboratory https://hilo.hawaii.edu/faculty/adam-a-pack/marine-mammal-lab/ has been conducting groundbreaking studies on humpback whales in Hawaiian waters, carrying on the legacy of the University of Hawai'i at Manoa's Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory which pioneered the scientific study of humpback whales in Hawaiian waters in 1976. Together with the lab's non-profit arm "The Dolphin Institute , these marine mammal labs have created one of the longest continuous studies of humpback whales and one of the richest and most extensive archives of humpback whale tail fluke identification photographs in the world. They have also provided applied learning experiences and internship opportunities to scores of students. Over the past decade, we have expanded our program to develop an even greater understanding of humpbacks. We have been conducting suction cup tagging of the whales to learn about their activities, energetics and vocalizations. We have also amassed one of the largest archives of humpback whale tissue samples in Hawai'i. From the hundreds of samples collected, we are learning about humpback whale physical and reproductive health. Our latest findings have been featured in the PBS films "Mystery of the humpback whale song," "Humpback Health" and in the PBS Kids "WildKratts" episode "Our Blue and Green World." To keep all of these research and education efforts going strong, we rely largely on the public's support. To make a charitable contribution to the UH Hilo Marine Mammal Laboratory, please visit our weblink here https://hilo.hawaii.edu/faculty/adam-a-pack/marine-mammal-lab/support.php . Any support is very much appreciated. Mahalo!

Aloha Friends and Supporters of The UH Hilo Pack Marine Mammal Lab,

On behalf of over 60 co-authors, we are pleased and honored to announce the publication of the paper “Bellwethers of change: population modelling of North Pacific humpback whales from 2002 through 2021 reveals shift from recovery to climate response” in the scientific journal Royal Society Open Science. Lead by Ted Cheeseman, developer of the HappyWhale https://happywhale.com an online automated humpback whale tail fluke matching program and database, the paper pooled together tens of thousands of humpback whale tail fluke photographs (the underside of a humpback whale’s tail fluke has a unique pigmentation pattern and trailing edge that can serve as the “finger-print” for identifying individuals) from scores of research groups including our lab https://hilo.hawaii.edu/faculty/adam-a-pack/marine-mammal-lab/ and our non-profit organization, The Dolphin Institute https://thedolphininstitute.org/ . The results showed that the population of humpback whales in the North Pacific increased to a peak estimate of 33,488 +/- 4455 whales in 2012. However, a 20% decline in abundance to 2021 suggested that the population reached carrying capacity due to loss of prey resources. This was especially reflected in the Hawaiian humpback whale breedinhttps://thedolphininstitute.org/and calving area for North Pacific humpbacks) in which abundance had decreased by 34% by 2021 from its peak in 2013. In contrast, no parallel decline was observed over this period in Mainland Mexico, a small breeding grounds for North Pacific humpbacks. Sandwiched within these years from 2014-2016, an unprecedented in size marine heatwave adversely impacted marine resources which humpback whales and other species rely on for sustenance. The result appeared to be several years of poor reproductive and physical health for many humpbacks wintering in Hawaii and summering in Alaska.

We are proud to have contributed over 10,000 tail fluke images from Hawaii and Alaska from its archival catalog of over 30,000 images for this study. Dr. Adam Pack, UH Hilo Professor and Founder of the UH Hilo Marine Mammal Lab and The Dolphin Institute, joined over 60 other researchers as a co-author on the study which is available online at
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.231462

The paper is an unprecedented-in-scope collaboration among humpback whale researchers as well as boat captains, crew and participants on whale watch excursions who generously donated their images to Happy Whale. It shows how when we all pool our resources and talent together we can learn remarkable things about humpback whales and their marine environment.

Bellwethers of change: population modelling of North Pacific humpback whales from 2002 through 2021 reveals shift from recovery to climate response | Royal Society Open Science For the 40 years after the end of commercial whaling in 1976, humpback whale populations in the North Pacific Ocean exhibited a prolonged period of recovery. Using mark–recapture methods on the largest individual photo-identification dataset ever ...

Wow!!! Awesome news that the documentary film “Vanishing Whales” produced by PBS South Florida’s CHANGING SEAS which features collaborative work of our UH Hilo marine mammal lab and The Dolphin Institute, the Marine Mammal Research Program at Hawaii Institute For Marine Biology, Pacific Whale Foundation, ALaska Whale Foundation, U ALaska Fairbanks and Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National marine Sanctuary, Uh Manoa and HAMER is an official section of the international ocean film festival in San Francisco!!

We’re over the moon! “Vanishing Whales” is an Official Selection of the International Ocean Film Festival in San Francisco. UH Hilo Pack Marine Mammal Lab The Dolphin Institute University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo
Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology - HIMB
Alaska Whale Foundation Marine Mammal Research Program University of Hawaii Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary University of Hawaii at Manoa

We are thrilled to inform our members and followers that this year, two students were chosen to receive the Louis M. Herman Student Research Scholarship: Franca Eichenberger of the University of St. Andrews, Scotland for the proposal “Eavesdropping on Whales – Does Humpback Whale Song Convey Genetic Quality?” and Julia Zeh of Syracuse University, the United States of America, for the proposal “Exploring Vocal Development in Humpback Whales.” Both proposals, rated at the top of 17 received from 9 different countries, focus on groundbreaking areas of marine mammal science closely related to Dr. Herman’s research, and capture his innovative and creative spirit. The winners were recently announced at the 24th Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals held in August in Palm Beach, Florida. A committee of marine mammal scientists meet every two years to consider proposals for The Louis M. Herman Student Research Scholarship. The scholarship was developed to honor Dr. Herman’s legacy of pioneering and creative research in dolphin cognition and humpback whale behavioral ecology, biology and communication by the Herman family, Dr. Adam A. Pack, TDI co-founder and long-time colleague of Dr. Herman, and the Society for Marine Mammalogy. To learn more about the scholarship and the awardees, please see the following link: https://marinemammalscience.org/awards-funding/awards-and-scholarships/louis-m-herman-research-scholarship/2022-louis-m-herman-winners/