Informing spatial planning for pygmy blue whale management: fine scale analysis of movement (WEL)

• Other Authors: AIMS Data Centre (distributor), AIMS Data Centre (pointOfContact), Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) (hasAssociationWith), Dr Michele Thums (hasPrincipalInvestigator)
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: Australian Ocean Data Network
• Subjects: oceans; Blue whale
• Online Access: https://researchdata.edu.au/informing-spatial-planning-movement-wel/2047177

Maintenance and Update Frequency: notPlanned Statement: Compiled PBW satellite telemetry data from previous projects that included ten implantable transmitters (Wildlife Computers SPOT; Type C invasive tags (Andrews et al. 2019) providing ARGOS location data, with nine whales tagged at Perth Canyon, between March-April 2009 and 2011 (Double et al. 2014) and one tagged in the Bonney Upwelling region of South Australia in March 2015 (Moller at al. 2020) during their outward migration to Indonesia. The satellite tags from Double et al. (2014) were programmed with a duty cycle of 6 hours on, 18 hours off with a 30 second repetition rate (the time between two consecutive message transmissions). The single satellite tag from M¿ller et al. (2020) was not duty cycled and had a 45 sec repetition rate. Further details can be found in Double et al. (2014) and M¿ller et al. (2020). Data from a further six satellite tags (Wildlife Computers LIMPET tags) providing ARGOS and Fastloc GPS satellite location data were also compiled from deployments on PBW whales at North-west Cape, Western Australia between May-June 2019-2020 (Thums et al. Submitted). Credit Funding Body: Woodside Energy Ltd This project documents the results of a desk-top analysis of existing pygmy blue whale (PBW) satellite telemetry data (horizontal and vertical movement) at finer scales than previously undertaken. The objective was to provide key parameters on the movement behaviour of PBW within the North-west Marine Region (NWMR) to assist in understanding and modelling their potential responses to underwater noise in the region. Satellite tagged PBW (n=10) spent 19 ± 6 days in the region between Ningaloo and the northern extent of Australia’s EEZ on the northern migration (present 12 April – 12 July) and 23 and 10 days on the southern migration (present 23 September – 30 October)