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Humpback whale migrations to Antarctic summer foraging grounds through the southwest Pacific Ocean

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posted on 2024-10-31, 04:43 authored by V Andrews-Goff, Sophie BestleySophie Bestley, NJ Gales, SM Laverick, D Paton, AM Polanowski, NT Schmitt, MC Double

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.

Funding

Australian Research Council

History

Publication title

Scientific Reports

Volume

8

Issue

1

Article number

123333

Number

123333

Pagination

1-14

ISSN

2045-2322

Department/School

Ecology and Biodiversity, Oceans and Cryosphere

Publisher

Nature Publishing Group

Publication status

  • Published

Place of publication

United Kingdom

Rights statement

Copyright 2018 The Authors. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Socio-economic Objectives

180404 Biodiversity in Antarctic and Southern Ocean environments, 180201 Assessment and management of coastal and estuarine ecosystems

UN Sustainable Development Goals

14 Life Below Water

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