Initial genotype matching of humpback whales from the 2010 Australia/New Zealand Antarctic Whale Expedition (Area V) to Australia and the South Pacific
Debbie SteelNatalie SchmittMegan AndersonDaniel BurnsSimon ChilderhouseRochelle ConstantineTrish FranklinWally FranklinNick GalesClaire GarrigueN GibbN HauserDavid K. MattilaCarlos OlavarríaDavid PatonM. Michael PooleJooke RobbinsJuney WardPeter HarrisonP. R. BaverstockMC DoubleC. Scott Baker
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Abstract Between the 1940s and 1970s Southern Hemisphere populations of humpback whales (including eastern Australia and Oceania populations) were hunted to near extinction by extensive commercial whaling activities in Antarctica, with fewer whales taken in shore whaling operations in New Zealand, Australia (including Norfolk Island) and Tonga. Variable rates of recovery of these populations have been documented, ranging from recovery to prewhaling numbers in eastern Australian humpbacks to very little sign of recovery in many Oceania populations. Here we analyze recent sighting data collected over 12 yr, from annual surveys in Cook Strait, New Zealand. The data show an increase in sightings, at an estimated rate of 13% (95% CI of 4.9% and 21.7%) in 2015, of humpback whales migrating through Cook Strait. The wide confidence intervals preclude substantive conclusions about the rate of increase but suggest humpback whales are returning to this region in increasing numbers, indicating an influx of immigrants from neighboring areas, namely eastern Australia.
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Intensive commercial whaling caused significant declines in Southern Hemisphere humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) populations. In Fiji, land-based humpback whale surveys undertaken from 1956 to 1958 documented maximum weekly counts of more than 150 humpback whales in parts of the Bligh waters. These records provide an invaluable point of comparison to present-day observations as they occurred immediately prior to very large humpback whale catches in Antarctic waters to the south – and on potential migration routes – of humpback whales breeding in Fijian waters. We report here on a three-year (2010–2012) land-based survey also conducted in the Bligh waters during which a total of 33 individuals over 480 h were counted from Ovalau Island and 68 individuals over approximately 300 h were observed from Makogai Island. These findings suggest a large decrease in numbers of humpback whales seen in Fiji waters since commercial whaling operations.
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Early ‘Discovery mark’ data together with recent photo-identification, acoustic, genetic and satellite-radio tag data revealed linkages between humpback whales migrating from breeding grounds (C) off East Africa and the Area III feeding area, from Western Australian breeding grounds (D) and the Antarctic Area IV feeding area and the East Australian breeding grounds (E1) and Antarctic Area V feeding area. These data also revealed low levels of intermingling between (E1) and (D) humpback whales in the Antarctic Area IV feeding area consistent with these being separate populations. Greenpeace photographed the ventral tail flukes of 30 individual humpback whales in the Antarctic Area IV feeding area (70°E–130°E) from 2 to 9 January 2008, between 62°47’S and 64°14’S latitude and 80°00’E and 112°57’E longitude. Comparisons of the Antarctic Area IV Greenpeace fluke catalogue (n = 30) with existing reconciled fluke catalogues from East Africa (n = 842), Western Australia (n = 1,558) and Eastern Australia (n = 1,964), yielded no photo-identification matches. An analysis of the frequencies of whales seen and not seen in Antarctica, East Africa, Western Australia and Eastern Australia relative to the frequencies expected to have been seen and not seen, based on the estimated population sizes and the sizes of the catalogues, provided evidence that the Antarctic whales photographed are from a different population to the East African and East Australian populations. There was weak evidence supporting the hypothesis that the Antarctic whales are from the Western Australian population but insufficient data were available to determine a clear outcome. A comparison of the Antarctic Area IV Greenpeace catalogue (n = 30) with other existing African, Indian Ocean, Western and Eastern Australian and/or Antarctic catalogues, together with increased sampling across the humpback whale feeding season in Antarctica and along the Western and Eastern Australian coastline during their winter migration, is likely to provide further evidence of the migratory destination of these humpback whales. It will also add to our limited knowledge of the extent of population overlap within the Antarctic Area III, IV and V feeding areas.
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The population structure of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) in the North Pacific has received significant attention in recent years through the collaborative Structure of Populations, Levels of Abundance, and Status of Humpback whales in the North Pacific (SPLASH) study. However, the analysis of humpback whales in the western North Pacific Asian population was limited in the SPLASH study, due to small sample size. Much of the Asian population summers off Kamchatka, Russia and spends the winters in breeding grounds in Okinawa and Ogasawara, Japan and the Babuyan Islands in the northern Philippines. Prior studies grouped the Commander Islands feeding ground in Russia, with the eastern Aleutian Islands as part of the central humpback whale stock. This paper uses additional years of photo-ID data from both the Philippines (160 whales from 2000–12) and the Commander Islands (531 whales from 2008–10) to establish a previously unreported migratory connection by matching four animals between the two sites. The new migratory linkage found in the present study suggests that a small portion of humpback whales hypothesised to be migrating to a ‘missing’ breeding ground in the central North Pacific are actually migrating to the Philippines. However, additional studies on a wider geographical scale are required.
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In western countries, whales and dolphins are iconic wildlife species and have been a key focus of marine conservation efforts since the 1970s. Social values based on conservation influence the type of benefits now sought from marine wildlife interactions, such as the trend towards non-consumptive viewing of wild cetaceans rather than killing whales or dolphins (Frohoff & Packard, 1995; Muloin, 1998; Bulbeck, 1999; Kellert, 1999; Hoyt, 2003; Parsons et al., 2003; Higham & Lusseau, 2004; Corkeron, 2006; Neves, 2010; Brakes & Simmons, 2011), or seeing wild instead of captive dolphins (Hughes, 2001; Bulbeck, 2005). These new environmental and amenity values of cetaceans as ‘charismatic mega-fauna’ have underpinned the rapid worldwide growth in whale- and dolphin-watching as a marine tourism activity (Hoyt, 2001; Orams, 2005; Cisneros-Montemayor et al., 2010). In 2008, over 13 million people went on whale-watching tours in 119 countries, generating income of US $2 billion in coastal economies (IFAW, 2009). The economic and conservation benefits of cetacean tours are supported by organizations such as the Pacific Whale Foundation, Whale and Dolphin Conservation, and Whales Alive.
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Humpback whales off the east coast of Australia were heavily exploited by commercial whaling operations. It has been documented in recent years that this population is growing; however, it is considered that still is below preexploitations levels. Here we investigate the genetic diversity of Eastern Australian humpback whales, comparing mitochondrial DNA control region sequence data with that of breeding grounds across the South Pacific (New Caledonia, Tonga, Cook Islands, French Polynesia and Colombia) and eastern Indian (Western Australia) oceans. We compared 156 sequences, representing individual whales sampled off Byron Bay (northbound migration 2002-2003) and Ballina (southbound migration 2003), with 1,112 samples from breeding grounds, comparing a 470 bp fragment of the mtDNA control region consensus sequence. The analysis revealed 42 haplotypes in Eastern Australia, with five unique haplotypes. The Eastern Australian humpback whale haplotype diversity (h) was 0.962 ± 0.005, and the nucleotide diversity (!) was 2.32 ± 1.18%. These levels were similar to those from the compared breeding grounds, but were significantly different only at haplotype level with New Caledonia, Cook Island, French Polynesia and Colombia breeding grounds. We found significant differences at haplotype and nucleotide levels with all the breeding grounds when a pair-wise AMOVA was performed, except with Tonga at nucleotide level. The genetic differentiation observed here and our previous analyses presented to the SC/IWC support the proposed stock sub-division of the breeding stock E into three sub-stocks, E1 (Eastern Australia), E2 (New Caledonia) and E3 (Tonga). INTRODUCTION The humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae Borowski, 1781) is distributed worldwide, with populations in all the major oceans (Kellogg, 1929; Clapham and Mead, 1999). During the last two centuries humpback whales were hunted intensively, especially in the Southern Hemisphere, where it was estimated that the population was reduced perhaps only to a few percent of its pre-exploitation abundance (Chapman, 1974). Based on catch records corrected for illegal Soviet whaling, a total of more than 200,000 humpback whales were killed from 1904 to 2000 (Baker and Clapham, 2002; Clapham and Baker, 2002). The Eastern Australian humpback whale stock, as a result of commercial whaling, declined to levels estimated to be a few hundred individuals by 1962 (Paterson et al., 1994). However, this stock has shown signs of recovery after more than 40 years since the end of commercial exploitation (Paterson and Paterson, 1984;1989; Paterson et al., 1994), with a current estimated abundance of about 7,000 individuals (Noad et al., 2006; Paton et al., 2006). Historically, humpback whales migrating through and/or wintering at Eastern Australia, New Zealand and the western South Pacific islands were considered to form the Group V stock (Mackintosh, 1965). It seemed that these whales spent the summer feeding in Antarctic waters east and west of the Balleny Islands (Mackintosh, 1965), but for management purposes they were considered to form the Antarctic Area V stock, which was limited by 130°E and 170°W, in the Southern Ocean (Donovan, 1991). Recently, under the Comprehensive Assessment of Southern Hemisphere humpback whales, the stock structure of this whale species has been reviewed and this breeding stock (BS) has been re-named E (IWC, 1998). Sub-divisions within this stock have been proposed, but they have not been completely
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ESR Endangered Species Research Contact the journal Facebook Twitter RSS Mailing List Subscribe to our mailing list via Mailchimp HomeLatest VolumeAbout the JournalEditorsSpecials ESR 22:33-38 (2013) - DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/esr00536 NOTE Evidence of spatial structuring of eastern South Pacific humpback whale feeding grounds J. Acevedo1,*, D. Haro2, L. Dalla Rosa3, A. Aguayo-Lobo4, R. Hucke-Gaete2,5, E. Secchi3, J. Plana6, L. A. Pastene7 1Centro de Estudios del Cuaternario de Fuego-Patagonia y Antártica (Fundación CEQUA), 21 de Mayo 1690, Casilla 727, Punta Arenas, Chile 2Centro Ballena Azul (CBA), c/o ICML, UACh, Casilla 567, Valdivia, Chile 3Instituto de Oceanografia, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande - FURG, Río Grande, RS 96201-900, Brasil 4Instituto Antártico Chileno (INACH), Departamento Científico, Plaza Muñoz Gamero 1055, Punta Arenas, Chile 5Instituto de Ciencias Marinas y Limnológicas, Universidad Austral de Chile, Casilla 567, Valdivia, Chile 6Ramón Menéndez Pidal 0294, Punta Arenas, Chile 7Institute of Cetacean Research, Toyomi 4-5, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104-0055, Japan *Email: jorge.acevedo@cequa.cl ABSTRACT: The eastern South Pacific humpback whale population winters primarily off Colombia and Ecuador, extending northward to the coasts of Panama and Costa Rica. It migrates south to the Fueguian Archipelago and Antarctic Peninsula waters for feeding during the austral summer. In recent years, however, humpback whales have also been observed feeding in the Corcovado Gulf, in the northern Chilean Patagonian channels, during the austral summer and fall. We examine photographically identified humpback whales in order to determine interchange or isolation of these aggregations. The apparent absence of movements of identified humpback whales among the 3 summering areas, and the differences in the proportion of white/black coloration on the fluke, suggest that each locality corresponds to a discrete feeding area for eastern South Pacific humpback whales. KEY WORDS: Humpback whale · Eastern South Pacific · Corcovado Gulf · Fueguian Archipelago · Southern Ocean · Feeding ground Full text in pdf format PreviousNextCite this article as: Acevedo J, Haro D, Dalla Rosa L, Aguayo-Lobo A and others (2013) Evidence of spatial structuring of eastern South Pacific humpback whale feeding grounds. Endang Species Res 22:33-38. https://doi.org/10.3354/esr00536 Export citation RSS - Facebook - Tweet - linkedIn Cited by Published in ESR Vol. 22, No. 1. Online publication date: October 24, 2013 Print ISSN: 1863-5407; Online ISSN: 1613-4796 Copyright © 2013 Inter-Research.
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Most models of population structure for Southern Hemisphere humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) assume that individuals feeding in the Scotia Sea migrate primarily to breeding and calving areas off Brazil. However data to support this are few and mostly indirect. Abrolhos Bank, Brazil, is the largest breeding and calving ground for humpback whales in the western South Atlantic Ocean. Historically, the waters near South Georgia held the largest concentrations of humpback whales in Antarctic Area II and were among the largest in the Southern Ocean. Photographs of individually distinctive natural markings on humpback whale flukes collected from the Scotia Sea (n=9) were compared with two collections of photographs from Brazilian waters (n=829 and n=735) to identify re-sightings. A humpback whale photographed in August 2000 at Abrolhos Bank was subsequently photographed in December 2004 near Shag Rocks off South Georgia. The migratory distance between these sightings is 3,945km. This finding constitutes the first long-distance individual resighting to be documented from either of these areas.
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We conducted the 31 st annual IWC-SOWER (formerly IDCR) Cruise in Antarctic Area IV aboard the Japanese Research Vessel Shonan Maru No.2. The cruise departed Benoa, Bali, Indonesia on 6 January 2009 and returned to Benoa, Bali, Indonesia on 26 February 2009. The cruise had three main objectives: 1) investigate temporal changes in the spatial distribution of minke whales in relation to recession of the pack ice using a combination of line transect survey, photo-identification studies and biopsy/mark-recapture effort; 2) continue research on blue whales, as in previous years, and; 3) continue research on humpback and southern right whales, as in previous years. The cruise duration was shorter-than-normal SOWER Antarctic cruises and the minke whale research was to have emphasis on investigation of feasibility aspects (especially with respect to the biopsy/mark-recapture effort). After transiting to the research area (spanning longitudes 082°E - 095°E), we carried out a whale survey conducted as a series of 4 repeat line-transect surveys of the research area from 19 January to 12 February. The research area extended from the pack ice edge and repeat surveys had a common northern boundary established 60 n.miles north of the ice edge determined during the first survey. A total of 1440.5 n.miles were covered during the 4 surveys, and in two survey modes: SS-II mode (611.4 n.miles) and BT-Option II mode (829.1 n.miles). The total number of minke whales sighted during the entire coverage of the research area was 49 groups, 56 animals. No substantial southward recession of the ice edge was observed during the survey period. AMSR-E satellite predictions of sea ice indicated extensive areas with low ice cover (0-3%) within the pack ice zone in the research area (the Davis Sea polynya and an adjoining large lead), however these areas were inaccessible for survey as they were south of our observed ice edge. Humpback whales were the most frequently sighted species in the research area, with 373 groups, 682 animals observed. Seven groups comprising 17 Antarctic blue whales were sighted, and biopsy samples, identification photos, video, and acoustic recordings were collected. In terms of numbers of animals encountered, killer whales were the second most frequently sighted species in the research area with a total of 255 animals observed (21 groups). Killer whale Types A, B, and C were seen as well as killer whales unclassified to Type. During the cruise biopsy samples were collected from 4 minke whales, 6 Antarctic blue whales, 23 humpback whales, and 1 killer whale. Individual identification photos of 15 minke whales, 12 Antarctic blue whales, and 74 humpback whales were obtained, as well as identification photos from 10 groups of killer whales. Trial telemetry approaches to minke whales were also to be attempted, however due to a lack of suitable minke whale groups, there was opportunity for only one trial, which was unsuccessful. Acoustic recordings were conducted at a total of 25 stations using sonobuoys. Sounds attributed to Antarctic blue whales were recorded at 3 stations conducted in the vicinity of the sighted blue whales and at 5 opportunistic stations. Notable sightings during the cruise included a mixed species feeding aggregation centered at 64°19'S 088°53'E on 9 February comprising 4 groups (51 animals) of killer whales, two fin whales, two minke whales and a humpback whale. A group of tropical killer whales (6 animals) was observed at 12°32'S 114°39'E. A southern bottlenose whale calf was recorded in a group of three whales on 21 February at position 28°21'S 111°20'E during the return transit to Benoa. During SOWER 2008-09 digital still cameras mounted above the top platform were used to collect images for the investigation of angle estimation and observer search patterns. The Estimated Angle and Distance Training Exercise and Experiment was completed as in previous years.
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