Counting whales in a challenging, changing environment

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2014-03-13Author
Williams, R.
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Kelly, N.
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Boebel, Olaf
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Friedlaender, Ari S.
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Herr, H.
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Kock, K.-H.
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Lehnert, L. S.
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Maksym, Ted
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Roberts, Jason J.
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Scheidat, M.
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Siebert, U.
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Brierley, A. S.
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https://hdl.handle.net/1912/6520As published
https://doi.org/10.1038/srep04170DOI
10.1038/srep04170Abstract
Estimating abundance of Antarctic minke whales is central to the International Whaling Commission's conservation and management work and understanding impacts of climate change on polar marine ecosystems. Detecting abundance trends is problematic, in part because minke whales are frequently sighted within Antarctic sea ice where navigational safety concerns prevent ships from surveying. Using icebreaker-supported helicopters, we conducted aerial surveys across a gradient of ice conditions to estimate minke whale density in the Weddell Sea. The surveys revealed substantial numbers of whales inside the sea ice. The Antarctic summer sea ice is undergoing rapid regional change in annual extent, distribution, and length of ice-covered season. These trends, along with substantial interannual variability in ice conditions, affect the proportion of whales available to be counted by traditional shipboard surveys. The strong association between whales and the dynamic, changing sea ice requires reexamination of the power to detect trends in whale abundance or predict ecosystem responses to climate change.
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© The Author(s), 2014. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Scientific Reports 4 (2014): 4170, doi:10.1038/srep04170.
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Scientific Reports 4 (2014): 4170The following license files are associated with this item: