STEMExplore Career Close-Up: Behavioral Ecologist

Rachel, this is a pretty idyllic setting. A day in the office, not so bad. My name is Rachel Cartwright. I'm the lead researcher with the Keiki Kahola Project. Now, one of the big mysteries we have here is we've never seen a calf born, so we don't quite know where birthing takes place. Really? So we've never... That's incredible. I teach biology at California State University, Channel Islands, and I also run the research program for the Keiki Kahola Project, which is a locally-based research organization here. And we're focused on providing the information required to ensure that this area here is managed as a nursery area for humpback, whale, mother, and calf pairs. Few words can describe how spectacular that was. At one point, I saw the baby just peeking out from beneath the mother, and then it broke off and just slowly rose to the surface. Fantastic. Well, I would say I've got two very typical days, and the first day is out here on the waters just out from Lahaina Harbor here on Maui. We'll set out nice and early in the morning and head out into this area of water here. This is a congregation area for humpback, whale, mothers, and calves. And we'll just generally spend our day with them. I spend about six weeks of the year working on the water here, and then about six months of the year is spent analyzing that data. So that's a very different day that is basically computer-based, but it's also the chance to answer the questions we've been asking, so it's actually pretty exciting too. I'm really excited in our chance to get into the air and see things from an aerial perspective. Previously, that's been done from helicopters and from small planes, but then you get this fleeting overview. And so in our research now, we're starting to use UAVs, just small UAVs that we can pop into the air with a camera on, and we're getting a new perspective. So what we've seen on the surface, and then we saw it underwater, and now we see it in the air, and it adds this complete picture to what we're doing.