Hal Whitehead
Whereabouts
I am normally based in the Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. However, I like best to be
at sea. The boat we use for our research, Balaena (Valiant 40 ocean-going cruising boat) sometimes works off Nova Scotia,
and sometimes in other parts of the world (for instance in the eastern tropical
Pacific in late 2008).
Our work
Our work is mainly on the
behaviour (principally social organization and cultural transmission), ecology
and population biology of sperm and northern bottlenose whales. We have ongoing
research projects in the eastern Pacific (sperm whales since 1985, work planned
for 2008-9 in Sea of Cortez, Mexico) and northwest Atlantic (sperm whales since
1986, bottlenose whales off Nova Scotia since 1988). We spend weeks at sea on
board ocean-going sailing boats collecting acoustic, visual, photographic and
oceanographic data, and then long periods analyzing them in the lab. The
graduate students whom I supervise study the social organization, behaviour,
acoustics, population biology and conservation of narwhal, pilot, sperm and
northern bottlenose whales as well as river dolphins. My own work is principally
on the behaviour, social structure, population biology and conservation of
sperm whales, techniques of studying social structure, and more general
questions about social structure in mammals and cultural evolution.
Books
Whitehead, H. 1989. Voyage to
the whales. Stoddart / Chelsea Green/ Robert Hale
Programs for the analysis of
social structure (SOCPROG)
I have written a series of MATLAB
programs for analyzing data on social structure, movements and populations
based on individual identifications. The programs are designed to be easy to
use, most input is done through graphical user interfaces (i.e. windows with
things to click on), and most things can be done without any knowledge of
MATLAB (although this helps for custom options, figuring out errors, making
your own extensions, etc.). The programs are also designed to be pretty
flexible so you can tailor the analyses to your data and hypotheses. The
current version is designed to be used with MATLAB7. The programs have recently
been updated.
These programs are available to
anyone who would like to use them. If you would like more information and/or
would like to download a copy of these programs click here now.
Advice for potential graduate students
Courses, etc. at Dalhousie
Currently I teach:
BIOL5700
Communications Skills
Address
Department of Biology, Dalhousie
University, 1355 Oxford St., Halifax, Nova Scotia, CANADA B3H 4J1
email: hwhitehe@dal.ca
FAX: 902-494-3736 Ph:
902-494-3723
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