Principal Investigator(s): (Include name, affiliation and email address):

• Main Authors: Dr. Aaron, Michael Thode
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Killer Whale; Sperm whale; Alaska; Killer whale
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.626.6640; http://doc.nprb.org/web/09_prjs/918_app1_web.pdf

Avoidance of interactions between fishing gear and whales Summary of Proposed Work: Sperm whales have learned to depredate deep-water sablefish longlines off Sitka, AK, and over the past decade their behavior has become more aggressive and widespread. Since 2003 the NPRB has funded a collaboration between fishermen and researchers (Southeast Alaska Sperm Whale Avoidance Project or SEASWAP), to understand the extent and nature of this behavior, with an aim of identifying methods for discouraging this behavior. Over the years SEASWAP field techniques have evolved from passive observations of opportunistic encounters to deliberate deployments for hypothesis testing. Under this proposal SEASWAP would conduct instrumented deployments to quantitatively test three different approaches to depredation reduction. The first two approaches, circle hauls and decoy anchorline deployments, have been discussed in the previous award (NPRB 626), and are the most promising of the so-called “passive strategies ” tested to date, based on previous instrumented deployments and volunteer sets by fishermen over the past four years. The third approach would use knowledge gained from our passive acoustic and video camera work to test an active acoustic deterrent device that would play back sperm whale echolocation sounds, white noise pulses, and transient killer whale sounds during a haul. This work would be leveraged by additional support from the Joint Industry Project of the Oil and Gas Producers Association, which has provided funds for 2009 to build the device, and to tag animals in order to document fine-scale reactions to