Humpback whale migrations to Antarctic summer foraging grounds through the southwest Pacific Ocean.

ABSTRACT: Humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) populations typically undertake seasonal migrations, spending winters in low latitude breeding grounds and summers foraging in high latitude feeding grounds. Until recently, a broad scale understanding of whale movement has been derived from whaling records, Discovery marks, photo identification and genetic analyses. However, with advances in satellite tagging technology and concurrent development of analytical methodologies we can now detail finer scale humpback whale movement, infer behavioural context and examine how these animals interact with their physical environment. Here we describe the temporal and spatial characteristics of migration along the east Australian seaboard and into the Southern Ocean by 30 humpback whales satellite tagged over

SUBMITTER: Andrews-Goff V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6098068 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature