Scientists Hope to Make a SPLASH With Study of Humpback Whales

Hundreds of researchers from 10 Pacific Rim nations will take part in a $3.3-million project to study the humpback whale population, federal marine officials have announced.

The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration said the three-year project will be the most comprehensive study ever of the endangered mammals.

Richard Spinrad, assistant administrator of the agency’s National Ocean Service, said the study -- called SPLASH, for Structure of Populations, Level of Abundance and Status of Humpbacks -- would provide information to better protect the whales in their habitat and rebuild their population.

“SPLASH is a big whale study,” he said Tuesday. “It’s a study of big whales, but it’s also the biggest and the most ambitious research study ever taken for the North Pacific population of humpback whales. It is unprecedented in terms of international cooperation and in terms of geographic scope.”

Hundreds of researchers from the United States, Japan, Russia, Mexico, Canada, the Philippines, Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua and Guatemala will be involved.

The study will include photo ID and biopsy tissue sampling in all known humpback whale habitats throughout the Pacific, from the Bering Sea and Russia, south to Costa Rica and west to the Hawaiian waters and beyond.

The humpback whale was listed as an endangered species in 1973. Scientists estimate that the pre-whaling population of the North Pacific whales was about 15,000, but their numbers have dwindled to about 7,000.

Samuel Pooley, the acting regional administrator of the NOAA Fisheries Pacific Islands regional office, said the study would help give an updated and more accurate population estimate and help determine whether the whales’ numbers were rising or falling.

Researcher David Mattila said the study would focus on Hawaii during the winter, when thousands of whales come to the islands.

The whales migrate from summer feeding grounds off Alaska, spending their winters mating and calving in the Hawaiian Islands’ warm, shallow coastal waters. About 5,000 humpback whales, or about two-thirds of the North Pacific stock, make the trip each year.