Elephant‐seal movements: Modelling migration

• Published in: Canadian Journal of Statistics
• Main Authors: Brillinger, David R., Stewart, Brent S.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 1998
• Subjects: Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty; Statistics and Probability; Pacific; Elephant Seal; Elephant Seals
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3315767; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.2307%2F3315767; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.2307/3315767

Abstract Elephant seals migrate over vast areas of the eastern North Pacific Ocean between rookeries in southern California and distant northern foraging areas. Several models of particle movement were evaluated and a model for great‐circle motion found to give reasonable results for the movement of an adult female. This model takes specific account of the fact that the movement is on the surface of a sphere and that the animal is apparently heading toward a particular destination. The parameters of the motion were estimated. Such a great‐circle path of migration may imply that these seals have the ability to assess their position with respect to some global or celestial cues, allowing them to continually adjust their course and achieve the most direct geodesic route between origin and destination of migration. But the navigational mechanism actually used by these seals to accomplish such feats is as yet unknown.