Abstract
As storms become increasingly intense and frequent due to climate change, we must better understand how they alter environmental conditions and impact species. However, storms are ephemeral and provide logistical challenges that prevent visual surveys commonly used to understand marine mammal ecology. Thus, relatively little is known about top predators’ responses to such environmental disturbances. In this study, we utilized passive acoustic monitoring to characterize the response of bottlenose dolphins to intense storms offshore Maryland, USA between 2015 and 2017. During and following four autumnal storms, dolphins were detected less frequently and for shorter periods of time. However, dolphins spent a significantly higher percentage of their encounters feeding after the storm than they did before or during. This change in foraging may have resulted from altered distributions and behavior of their prey species, which are prone to responding to environmental changes, such as varied sea surface temperatures caused by storms. It is increasingly vital to determine how these intense storms alter oceanography, prey movements, and the behavior of top predators.
Highlights
29 Sept–15 Oct (17 days) marine mammals, it is not yet clear how elevated sound levels from natural sources, such as those caused by high wind and wave action during storms, affects their behavior and ecology
We analyzed passive acoustic detections of bottlenose dolphin calls within the US Mid-Atlantic Bight to determine whether dolphin occurrence and foraging behavior were affected by intense storm events (Table 1, Fig. 1b)
Common dolphins (Delphinus delphis), spotted dolphins (Stenella frontalis), and bottlenose dolphins are present in this r egion[32]
Summary
29 Sept–15 Oct (17 days) marine mammals, it is not yet clear how elevated sound levels from natural sources, such as those caused by high wind and wave action during storms, affects their behavior and ecology. The US Mid-Atlantic Bight is a large shelf region in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean spanning subtropical and temperate zones that are susceptible to rapid changes in ocean conditions caused by autumnal storm events. During these intense storm events, flow conditions change, environmental noise is increased, and shelf waters rapidly destratify causing large temperature changes[14,31]. While bottlenose dolphins and other marine mammals are highly mobile, adaptable, and potentially less directly impacted by changes in water temperature than ectothermic species, they could be indirectly affected by alterations in prey behavior and distribution. Marine ecosystems may be increasingly exposed to disturbances such as storm events, which are expected to occur with higher frequency and intensity as the climate c hanges[8]
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