Exposure and behavioural responses of tagged bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) to vessels in the Pacific Arctic

Arctic marine mammals face many challenges linked to climate change, including increasing anthropogenic noise from vessel traffic. The bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus Linnaeus, 1758), an Arctic endemic cetacean, relies on acoustic communication, with documented overlapping frequencies between comm...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:Arctic Science
Main Authors: Morgan J. Martin, William D. Halliday, John J. Citta, Lori Quakenbush, Lois Harwood, Ellen V. Lea, Francis Juanes, Jackie Dawson, Adrian Nicoll, Stephen J. Insley
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
French
Published: Canadian Science Publishing 2023
Subjects:
acoustic disturbance
anthropogenic noise
Automatic Identification System
biologging tags
cetacean
vessel traffic
Environmental sciences
GE1-350
Environmental engineering
TA170-171
Arctic
Pacific
Arctic marine mammals
Balaena mysticetus
bowhead whale
Chukchi
Climate change
Eubalaena glacialis
North Atlantic
Pacific Arctic
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1139/as-2022-0052
https://doaj.org/article/7fed1a724c66497996dcd1ae98da1cfa
Description
Summary:Arctic marine mammals face many challenges linked to climate change, including increasing anthropogenic noise from vessel traffic. The bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus Linnaeus, 1758), an Arctic endemic cetacean, relies on acoustic communication, with documented overlapping frequencies between communication and vessel noise. Bering–Chukchi–Beaufort (BCB) bowhead whales migrate through areas with the highest levels of vessel traffic in the Pacific Arctic. Here, we document the spatial and temporal overlap between 25 satellite-tagged BCB bowhead whales and vessels during July–December, 2012–2018. We report 1332 occasions when a vessel was within 125 km of a tagged whale, and where possible, quantified changes in swim speed to investigate individual behavioural responses to vessel approaches within a 50 km radius (n = 18 encounters). In the quantitative analysis, bowhead whales were not observed to alter swim speed within 8–50 km of vessels (we could not assess distances <8 km). Our results suggest that bowhead whales did not exhibit detectable long-range (i.e., up to 50 km) behavioural responses to vessels, consistent with observations of closely related North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis (Muller, 1776)), for which vessel strikes are a leading cause of mortality. More work is required to assess how bowhead whales react to vessels at closer distances.

Similar Items