Relation between beluga whale aggregations and sea temperature on climate change forecasts

Climate change has been shown to alter the spatial distribution of whales and other marine mammals. Fast changing ocean temperatures may also affect the spatial distribution of whales at a finer scale, namely within populations, including aggregation behaviour. Our ability to analyze the impact of c...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Frontiers in Marine Science
Main Authors: Marga L. Rivas, Emilio Guirado, Zaida Ortega
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2024
Subjects:
biodiversity conservation
climate projections
deep learning
global warming
marine mammals
Science
Q
General. Including nature conservation
geographical distribution
QH1-199.5
Arctic Ocean
Beluga
Beluga whale
Beluga*
Climate change
Global warming
Alaska
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2024.1359429
https://doaj.org/article/69efe041d98e4ea3a4d09be2bc6488a2
Description
Summary:Climate change has been shown to alter the spatial distribution of whales and other marine mammals. Fast changing ocean temperatures may also affect the spatial distribution of whales at a finer scale, namely within populations, including aggregation behaviour. Our ability to analyze the impact of climate change on whale aggregation behavior, however, has been limited by our ability to collect spatial observation data over large areas. To overcome this limitation, this study analyzed open-access satellite imagery obtained between 2007 and 2020 in Canada, Russia, and Alaska using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) to detect 1,980 beluga whales in 11 populations and to quantify their aggregation patterns within their populations. Subsequently, we examined the relationship between sea surface temperature (SST) and the intra-population spatial patterns of beluga whales during summer seasons, when these whales normally aggregate. We detected a negative correlation between SST and the frequency of beluga whale aggregation, suggesting that warming temperatures may impact beluga whale spatio-behavioral dynamics. Considering that the relative abundance of beluga whales is declining and the future SST projections in these Arctic Ocean locations, climate change may pose yet another threat to beluga whales and other ice-dependent species.

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