Bowhead whales overwinter in the Amundsen Gulf and Eastern Beaufort Sea ...

• Main Authors: Insley, Stephen, Halliday, William, Mouy, Xavier, Diogou, Niki
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2020
• Subjects: FOS Biological sciences; Balaena mysticetus; Sea ice; bowhead whale; Arctic; Canada; Cape Bathurst; Ulukhaktok; Amundsen Gulf; baleen whale; Beaufort Sea; Climate change
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.rn8pk0p7n; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.rn8pk0p7n

The bowhead whale is the only baleen whale endemic to the Arctic and is well adapted to this environment. Bowheads live near the polar ice edge for much of the year and although sea ice dynamics are not the only driver of their annual migratory movements, it likely plays a key role. Given the intrinsic variability of open water and ice, one might expect bowhead migratory plasticity to be high and linked to this proximate environmental factor. Here, through a network of underwater passive acoustic recorders, we document the first known occurrence of bowheads overwintering in what is normally their summer foraging grounds in the Amundsen Gulf and eastern Beaufort Sea. The underlying question is whether this is the leading edge of a phenological shift in a species’ migratory behaviour in an environment undergoing dramatic shifts due to climate change. ... : File: Daily_Bowhead_Presence.csv Methods: Passive acoustic data were recorded at four sites in NWT, Canada: Ulukhaktok (70°42.857’N, 117°48.020’W), Cape Bathurst at 50 m depth (70°34.5469’N, 127°39.6319’W), Cape Bathurst at 300 m depth (70°40.8732’N, 126°52.2977’W), and near Pearce Point (70°12.055’N, 123°09.470’W). Data from Ulukhaktok were recorded using a Wildlife Acoustics SM3M acoustic recorder, and all other data were recorded using a SoundTrap ST500 acoustic recorder. All recorders were set to record 5 minutes of audio data every hour at a 48 kHz sampling rate, and data included in this study are from October 2018 to April 2019. The recorder at Ulukhatoky used a gain setting of +12 dB. Data were processed using an automated detector and classifier for bowhead whale vocalizations, and all detections in the autumn and winter were manually verified for the presence of bowhead whale vocalizations, as well as 10% of the data without any automated detections. Metadata: Date: The date in Mountain Standard ...