Pygmy blue whale movement, distribution and important areas in the Eastern Indian Ocean

• Published in: Global Ecology and Conservation
• Main Authors: Thums, Michele, Ferreira, Luciana, Jenner, Curt, Jenner, Micheline, Harris, Danielle, Davenport, Andrew, Andrews-Goff, Virginia, Double, Mike, Möller, Luciana, Attard, Catherine R.M., Bilgmann, Kerstin, Thomson, Paul, McCauley, Robert
• Other Authors: University of St Andrews. School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews. Sea Mammal Research Unit, University of St Andrews. Centre for Research into Ecological & Environmental Modelling
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: Migration; Foraging; Satellite telemetry; Passive acoustics; Biologically Important Areas; Ecologically Significant Areas; GC Oceanography; QH301 Biology; NDAS; GC; QH301; Indian; Blue whale
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10023/24960; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2022.e02054

This study was conducted as part of AIMS’ North West Shoals to Shore Research Program (NWSSRP) and was supported by Santos as part of the company’s commitment to better understand Western Australia’s marine environment. Hydrophone pressure data from Ocean Bottom Seismometers (OBS) were provided by the CANPASS project, jointly funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC grants 91955210, 41625016), and the China Academy of Science (CAS program GJHZ1776). Instruments were provided by the Australian National instrument pool ANSIR (http://ansir.org.au/). ANSIR, OBS data was also made data available from the Geoscience Australia and Shell. Data was sourced from Australia’s Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS). Pygmy blue whales in the South-east Indian Ocean migrate from the southern coast of Australia to Indonesia, with a significant part of their migration route passing through areas subject to oil and gas production. This study aimed at improving our understanding of the spatial extent of the distribution, migration and foraging areas, to better inform impact assessment of anthropogenic activities in these regions. Using a combination of passive acoustic monitoring of the NW Australian coast (46 instruments from 2006 to 2019) and satellite telemetry data (22 tag deployments from 2009 to 2021) we quantified the pygmy blue whale distribution and important areas during their northern and southern migration. We show extensive use of slope habitat off Western Australia and only minimal use of shelf habitat, compared to southern Australia where use of the continental shelf and shelf break predominates. In addition, movement behaviour estimated by a state-space model on satellite tag data showed that in general pygmy blue whales off Western Australia were mostly engaged in migration, interspersed with mostly relatively short periods (median = 28hours, range = 2 – 1080hours) of low move persistence (slow movement with high turning angles), which is indicative of foraging. Using the spatial ...