Humpback Whale Tagging in Support of Marine Mammal Monitoring Across Multiple Navy Training Areas in the Pacific Ocean: Final Report of Tagging Efforts off the Pacific Northwest in Summer 2018

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This report presents detailed results from the tagging, biopsy sampling, and photo-identification efforts conducted off the coast of northern Washington and central Oregon in summer 2018, as well as results from previous OSU studies of humpback whales in Oregon in 2016 and 2017. Whale use of Navy training and testing areas as well as their use of NMFS-identified Biologically Important Areas (BIAs) is examined and assignment to various DPSs (based on tracking, genetic, and photographic information) is discussed. Comparisons are made to tracking results from humpback whales tagged by OSU in California in 2004, 2005, and 2017 (presented in Mate et al. 2018a). For the 2018 data, this report also presents detailed dive behavior analyses and ecological relationships between whale locations and oceanographic conditions.