Orca Behavior Institute

The Orca Behavior Institute (OBI) was co-founded by Michael Weiss and Monika Wieland in March 2015. Our current research goals focus on documenting the changing social associations among the Southern Residents as the pods split and merge, studying how acoustic communication changes in these different social associations, and replicating a behavioral budget study from 35 years ago, in part to validate the anecdotal claims that the whales are foraging more and socializing and resting less. We conduct our research both from shore and on our research vessel, Serenity. All of our boat-based research occurs in accordance with the federal whale-watching regulations as well as the PWWA guidelines.

Michael Weiss is going into his senior year at Reed College and will use the data from our first field season to do his undergraduate thesis. He presented some his work from the summer of 2014 at an American Cetacean Society Conference, and is in the process of writing it up for publication. Monika Wieland is a graduate of Reed College, where her undergraduate thesis focused on killer whale bioacoustics. She's published a peer-reviewed paper in Marine Mammal Science, but is also known locally for her wildlife photography and her blog, Orca Watcher. While Monika and Michael are the lead researchers at OBI, they are supported by several other volunteers who donate their expertise and/or help out in the field.

One such team member, Sara Hysong-Shimazu, both designed the OBI logo and created this stunning T-shirt featuring the K14 matriline: K14 Lea, K26 Lobo, K36 Yoda, and K42 Kelp. The K14s have been present for over half of our first 40 research encounters, so we wanted to feature them on the first OBI T-shirt.