A link between male sperm whales,Physeter macrocephalus, of the Azores and Norway

Abstract

Little is known about the movements of male sperm whales, Physeter macrocephalus, in the North Atlantic. Recoveries of traditional harpoons and tags during commercial whaling indicated movements from Nova Scotia to Spain and from the Azores to Iceland and Spain. We compared collections of photo-identification images from different areas using the North Atlantic and Mediterranean Sperm Whale Catalogue and the Eurphlukes Phlex/Match programs. The largest collections of identified males (number of individuals, start and end date for data collection shown in parentheses) are for the Azores ). There were six matches between Andenes and Tromsø ( 25 nm), with three of these re-sighted in multiple years and three photo-identification matches from the Azores to Norway ( 2400 nm). In all cases individuals first photographed in the Azores (in 1993, 1999 and 2003) were matched to images collected later in Tromsø (in 2007 and. In 1997 a photo-identification image from Andenes matched a male stranded on the west coast of Ireland. No matches were made to images in smaller collections from Iceland, Nova Scotia, Greenland, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean. These findings show the value of data collected from whale watching vessels and the importance of collaboration between groups to allow investigation on an ocean basin scale. It is hoped that with the coordinated collection of more images from around the Atlantic, further insight might be gained into the movements of these widely ranging animals.

Long-Distance Travellers: Phylogeography of a Generalist Parasite, Pholeter gastrophilus, from Cetaceans

“…The ability of pelagic cetaceans to move over long distances has been documented for several species that serve as hosts for P . gastrophilus , including, e.g., the short-beaked common dolphin [8, 102], the oceanic populations of the bottlenose dolphin [103, 104], the dusky dolphin [105], the short-finned pilot whale [106, 107], and the sperm whale [108] (Table 1). However, we detected significant population structure in the Atlantic population of P .…”

No evidence for recovery in the population of sperm whale bulls off Western Australia, 30 years post-whaling

“…Steiner et al 2012), they almost certainly have the capacity to alter their distribution in response to environmental change and prey availability. Without any abundance estimates or monitoring programs for sperm whales in Australian waters, however, it is impossible to ascertain whether sperm whales that once attended Albany have moved elsewhere within the region.…”

Demography or selection on linked cultural traits or genes? Investigating the driver of low mtDNA diversity in the sperm whale using complementary mitochondrial and nuclear genome analyses

“…Among toothed whales, however, unusually low mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) diversity in some of the social odontocetes (e.g., sperm, pilot, killer and false‐killer whales; Alexander et al., , ; Hoelzel et al., ; Martien et al., ; Van Cise et al., ) has limited power to infer population structure, phylogeography and historical demography using traditional genetic tools. The sperm whale ( Physeter macrocephalus ) is particularly enigmatic in this respect, as it is one of the most cosmopolitan and abundant of the large odontocetes, and known to move over large ranges of up to thousands of kilometres over annual or longer time periods (Mizroch & Rice, ; Steiner et al., ; Straley et al., ), yet it exhibits low mtDNA diversity and evidence of female philopatry (Alexander et al., ; Lyrholm & Gyllensten, ; Lyrholm, Leimar, Johanneson, & Gyllensten, ; Mesnick et al., ).…”