Amy Willoughby

Listening to Bowhead Whales: A Story of Death and Discovery

About the Speaker

Amy Willoughby is a Research Scientist with the University of Washington’s Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean and Ecosystem Studies (CICOES) and an affiliate at NOAA Fisheries’ Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, WA. She earned her B.Sc. in Liberal Studies and a Minor in Environmental Science with a concentration on Biology at the University of Central Florida. Amy began her career on the sandy beaches of Florida’s Atlantic coast, where she conducted research on sea turtle nesting and reproductive success. She took to the skies in 2009 as a marine mammal observer for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s North Atlantic right whale Early Warning System project, which propelled her into a career of conducting research from airplanes. In 2014, Amy headed to the Alaskan Arctic for a seasonal position with the Aerial Surveys of Arctic Marine Mammals (ASAMM) project as a marine mammal observer and was fortunate to have the project invite her on as a full-time employee. Since then, she has worked year-round on fieldwork logistics, data management and analysis, and scientific writing, and she serves as observer, team leader, and walrus data liaison during field operations. Her current research interests include the effects of climate variability and human impacts on small and large cetaceans (harbor porpoise, beluga, killer, bowhead, gray, humpback, fin, and minke whales) in the US Pacific Arctic; using ASAMM’s 41-year aerial survey dataset to forecast biologically important areas for Pacific Arctic large cetaceans; and collaborating with other researchers and marine mammal subsistence hunters to ensure that research undertaken is beneficial to the animals and to the communities who depend on them for cultural, spiritual, and nutritional needs. Her most recent endeavors involve investigating bowhead and gray whale carcasses documented during ASAMM to determine probable cause of death. Through these inquiries, she and her collaborating colleagues have determined that probable killer whale predation was the primary cause of death for over half of the bowhead and gray whale carcasses that ASAMM encountered in the waters of the northeastern Chukchi Sea and western Beaufort Sea during the months of July through October between 2009 and 2019. The link between probable killer whale predation on bowhead whales in these waters is a new discovery for scientist and an important piece of bowhead whale life history.