The Indian Ocean humpback dolphin was recently uplisted to 'Endangered' in the recent SouthAfrican National Red List assessment. Abundance estimates are available from a number of localized study sites, but knowledge of movement patterns and population linkage between these sites is poor. A national research collaboration, the SouSA project, was established in 2016 to address this key knowledge gap. Twenty identification catalogues collected between 2000 and 2016 in 13 different locations were collated and compared.2. Photographs of 526 humpback dolphins (all catalogues and photos) were reduced to 337 individuals from 12 locations after data selection. Of these, 90 matches were found for 61 individuals over multiple sites, resulting in 247 uniquely, well-marked humpback dolphins identified in South Africa.3. Movements were observed along most of the coastline studied. Ranging distances had a median value of 120 km and varied from 30 km up to 500 km. Long-term site fidelity was also evident in the data. Dolphins ranging along the south coast of South Africa seem to form one single population at the western end of the species' global range.4. Current available photo-identification data suggested national abundance may be well below previous estimates of 1000 individuals, with numbers possibly closer to 500. Bearing in mind the poor conservation status of the species in the country, the development of a national Biodiversity Management Plan aimed at ensuring the long-term survival of the species in South Africa is strongly recommended. At the same time, increased research efforts are essential, particularly to allow for an in-depth assessment of population numbers and drivers of changes therein.5. The present study clearly indicates the importance of scientific collaboration when investigating highly mobile and endangered species.
Effective conservation management requires information on wildlife abundance and distribution. Platforms of opportunity, including whale-watching vessels (WWV), can provide inexpensive and valuable information particularly in data deficient areas. This study analyzed over 5,500 cetacean
encounters from more than 2,500 trips over 10 years by a WWV in the Western Cape, South Africa. Results were twofold: 1) providing spatial and temporal distribution patterns of the five main cetacean species for the area (southern right, humpback, and Bryde's whales, Indo-Pacific bottlenose
and Indian Ocean humpback dolphins) and the first long-term, year-round data for this area; 2) showing that regularly recorded opportunistic encounters from a WWV constitute an important source of baseline information. Caveats and limitations of data from WWV are discussed and advice regarding
data collection from platforms of opportunity is provided. Particularly, the lack of effort data and of clearly defined behavioral categories is emphasized and standardization of guidelines for data collection methods worldwide is suggested.
Manual acoustic telemetry was used to describe core habitat use of white sharks in the complex marine landscape of the Dyer Island and Geyser Rock system near Gansbaai, South Africa. We compared home range estimates and swimming pattern analyses to those established at Mossel Bay, another white shark aggregation area roughly 300 km to the east. Traditional home range estimates used in Mossel Bay did not account for movement or barriers, and were thus biased towards areas with very little shark movement (i.e. potential resting areas). We found that adapting a Movement-based Kernel Density Estimate (MKDE) could account for movement and barriers, resolving these issues. At Dyer Island and Geyser Rock, daytime shark habitat use was adjacent to the seal colony, with low rates of movement, non-linear swimming patterns and small activity areas. At night, rates of movement and linearity increased as sharks travelled further from the islands into deeper waters. MKDEs revealed 4 focal areas of habitat use: a channel between the 2 islands, an area to the south of the seal colony, another area near a kelp feature to the southwest of the seal colony and a reef system to the northwest. These results differed significantly from the habitat use at Mossel Bay, where focal areas occurred adjacent to the seal colony during the hours of dawn and dusk. We discuss possible explanations for these differences. This study is the first to make use of MKDEs in a complex marine landscape and highlights important differences in habitat use of a threatened species between 2 separate aggregation areas.
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