New insights into prime Southern Ocean forage grounds for thriving Western Australian humpback whales.

ABSTRACT: Humpback whale populations migrate extensively between winter breeding grounds and summer feeding grounds, however known links to remote Antarctic feeding grounds remain limited in many cases. New satellite tracks detail humpback whale migration pathways from Western Australia into the Southern Ocean. These highlight a focal feeding area during austral spring and early summer at the southern Kerguelen plateau, in a western boundary current where a sharp northward turn and retroflection of ocean fronts occurs along the eastern plateau edge. The topographic steering of oceanographic features here likely supports a predictable, productive and persistent forage ground. The spatial distribution of whaling catches and Discovery era mark-recaptures confirms the importance of this region to Wester

SUBMITTER: Bestley S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6764985 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature