Acoustics and photo-identification provide new insights on killer whale presence and movements when interacting with longline fisheries in South East Australia

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Removal of target catch from longlines by marine mammals, known as depredation, is a global issue creating animal welfare, socioeconomic and management concerns. The killer whale (Orcinus orca) is a key species of concern for longline depredation due to their global presence and ability to remove large quantities of caught fish. Currently, data on whale behaviours around fishing vessels, including timing of depredation and ability to follow vessels, is not completely understood. This lack of knowledge prevents a complete assessment of depredation both spatially and temporally, which is important to reduce the chance of underestimating depredation events. Our study utilised both photo-identification and acoustics as complementary approaches to investigate depredation on the blue-eye trevalla (Hyperoglyphe antarctica) demersal longline fishery in Australia. Of the 14 d when depredations were recorded acoustic detection of killer whales prior to visual confirmations occurred in 13 (93 %). Photo-identification revealed individuals repeatedly interacting with the vessel, sometimes over long distances (>1000 km), with increasing inter-depredation times as the vessel travelled further. These findings suggest that killer whales move to known fishing areas well before detection from surface monitoring occurs. While this study has revealed aspects of killer whale behaviours when encountering and interacting with longline fisheries, it has highlighted how traditional monitoring methods underestimate depredation and that this aspect needs to be further investigated.