Scientists tag humpback whales in southeast Pacific: Study reveals vital information for species pro
Scientists tag humpback whales in southeast Pacific: Study reveals vital information for species protection
April 13, 2017
Whales from both poles migrate long distances to breed in tropical waters. Smithsonian scientist Hector M. Guzman and Fernando Félix at the Salinas Whale Museum in Ecuador, tagged 47 humpbacks with satellite transmitters to understand how the humpbacks' Southeastern Pacific population moves within breeding areas.
"Our work fills an informational void: we've known these whales move between feeding areas and breeding areas, but we hadn't characterized their movements, and we couldn't exactly pinpoint the range of the breeding area," said Guzman, marine ecologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama. "Now we know that individuals move between countries within the breeding season and that their entire breeding area extends approximately 2,600 kilometers of non-straight coastline from Costa Rica to Peru."
For years, scientists have identified individual humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) based on their unique fluke and dorsal fin patterns. In this study funded by STRI, Panama's National Office of Science and Technology, the Candeo Fund at the International Community Foundation and the Whale Museum, 25 whales were satellite tagged in Panama and 22 in Ecuador between 2009 and 2015 according to methods approved by the Smithsonian's Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). On average, tags transmitted for about two weeks, although one tag lasted for 69 days during which a mother whale swam nearly 6,000 kilometers. Information from the 37 tags that transmitted for at least 1 day revealed the movements of 23 mothers accompanied by newborn calves and 14 unsexed animals.
"Thanks to new spatial models that were used to evaluate the movement of the whales, we could differentiate behaviors and gauge the speed of the whales during their reproductive and migratory periods," Félix said.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-04-scientists-tag-humpback-whales-southeast.html#jCp
