CARTERET COUNTY -- The Song of the Whale has a new temporary home in Beaufort, North Carolina.  

  • The whale research vessel belongs to Marine Conservation Research from the United Kingdom
  • Its European crew traveled across the Atlantic for a month to help researchers at Duke University's Marine Lab study sperm and beaked whales
  • Researchers are gathering baseline information about the whales to further study the impact of manmade noise on them

The whale research vessel belongs to Marine Conservation Research from the United Kingdom. 

Its European crew traveled across the Atlantic for a month to help researchers at Duke University's Marine Lab study sperm and beaked whales.

The university is commissioning the boat because it is quite enough to study the whales without disturbing them.

Researchers are gathering baseline information about the whales to further study the impact of manmade noise on them.

"We are going to be offshore to look at cryptic, offshore marine mammal species. So, we're looking at whales that are difficult to study. They are way out at sea, they don't spend a lot of time at the surface, and these are sperm whales and beaked whales primarily," said Dr. Douglas Nowacek at Duke University's Marine Lab.

The marine lab will have the boat until early January.

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