Please find below information about our new Scientific Reports publication,
Humpback whale migrations to Antarctic summer foraging grounds through the
southwest Pacific Ocean?, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-30748-4.
Many thanks, Virginia
Andrews-Goff, V., Bestley, S., Gales, N. J., Laverick, S. M., Paton, D.,
Polanowski, A. M., Schmitt, N. T. and Double, M. C. 2018. Humpback whale
migrations to Antarctic summer foraging grounds through the southwest Pacific
Ocean. Scientific Reports 8(1): 12333.
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.
Dr. Virginia Andrews-Goff
Marine Mammal Research and Support Officer
Australian Marine Mammal Centre
Australian Antarctic Division
203 Channel Hwy, Kingston, TAS 7050
T: 03 6232 3122 | M: 0404 668 639
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