Right Whale Diving and Foraging Behavior in the Southwestern Gulf of Maine

• Main Author: Baumgartner, Mark
• Other Authors: WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION MA DEPT OF BIOLOGY
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: Biology; *WHALES; ACOUSTIC PROPERTIES; BEHAVIOR; DIVING; ECOLOGY; SHIPS; STRATEGY; baleen whale; baleen whales
• Online Access: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA598727; http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA598727

Mitigation of a variety of anthropogenic threats to endangered baleen whales depends on information about how the whales use the water column. For example, reducing ship strike risk requires an understanding of how much time whales spend at the surface, and mitigating fishing gear entanglements by ground lines requires an understanding of how often and why whales might dive near the bottom. My long-term goal is to characterize baleen whale foraging behavior by studying diving behavior with respect to vertical/horizontal prey distribution, physical water column features (e.g., mixed layer, stratification, turbulence), and the acoustic environment. This approach will allow me to characterize not only where in the water column the whales feed, but also where the prey are located, why the prey are organized as they are, and how the whales respond to variability in both prey distribution and conspecific acoustic behavior. By using this same approach to study several baleen whale species, comparisons between species will ultimately be possible to address fundamental questions about foraging ecology (e.g., variability in foraging strategy induced by morphological constraints and/or prey species/behavior) as well as about differential rates of interaction with human activities.