Abstract
Humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) populations typically undertake seasonal migrations, spending winters in low latitude breeding grounds and summers foraging in high latitude feeding grounds. Until recently, a broad scale understanding of whale movement has been derived from whaling records, Discovery marks, photo identification and genetic analyses. However, with advances in satellite tagging technology and concurrent development of analytical methodologies we can now detail finer scale humpback whale movement, infer behavioural context and examine how these animals interact with their physical environment. Here we describe the temporal and spatial characteristics of migration along the east Australian seaboard and into the Southern Ocean by 30 humpback whales satellite tagged over three consecutive austral summers. We characterise the putative Antarctic feeding grounds and identify supplemental foraging within temperate, migratory corridors. We demonstrate that Antarctic foraging habitat is associated with the marginal ice zone, with key predictors of inferred foraging behaviour including distance from the ice edge, ice melt rate and variability in ice concentration two months prior to arrival. We discuss the highly variable ice season within the putative foraging habitat and the implications that this and other environmental factors may have on the continued strong recovery of this humpback whale population.
Highlights
Humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) populations typically undertake seasonal migrations, spending winters in low latitude breeding grounds and summers foraging in high latitude feeding grounds
Thirty humpback whales were tracked during three austral summers (2008/09, 2009/10 and 2010/11; Fig. 1 and Table 1) over a period of 3 to 155 days with a mean (±SD) track duration of 50 ± 35 days (Table 2)
On the Antarctic feeding grounds south of 60 °S, tracked whales covered a mean distance of 1885 ± 1567 km, travelling 52 ± 18 km per day
Summary
Humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) populations typically undertake seasonal migrations, spending winters in low latitude breeding grounds and summers foraging in high latitude feeding grounds. Most humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) populations undertake seasonal migration, spending the winter in low latitude breeding grounds and the summer foraging in high latitude and productive feeding grounds[2]. Non-lethal methods such as photo identification (for example4) and genetic analyses (for example5) have provided similar point location data. These data, provide no detail on the movements in between mark and recapture. Satellite tags recently revealed novel migratory pathways of New Caledonia humpback whales that utilise seamount habitats both during the breeding season and while migrating[8]. Combining historical whaling and sightings data, Branch et al.[9] hypothesised that pygmy
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