Long‐term survival of humpback whales radio‐tagged in Alaska from 1976 through 1978

Abstract

Invasive tags designed to provide information on animal movements through radio or satellite monitoring have tremendous potential for the study of whales and other cetaceans. However, to date there have been no published studies on the survival of tagged animals over periods of years or decades. Researchers from the National Marine Mammal Laboratory and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution tracked five humpback whales with implanted radio tags in southeastern Alaska in August 1976 and July 1977, and tracked two humpback whales in Prince William Sound, Alaska, in June 1978. All seven of these individually identified humpback whales were resighted at least 20 yr after first being tagged, and five of the seven have been observed for more than 30 yr; some of them are among the most resighted humpback whales in the North Pacific. Photos of tagging sites taken during and subsequent to tagging operations show persistent but superficial scarring and no indication of infection.These pioneering field studies demonstrated both long-term survival of the whales and the short-term effects of deploying radio tags, which at the time were larger and more invasive than those typically used today.

Resightings of humpback whales in Hawaiian waters over spans of 10–32 years: Site fidelity, sex ratios, calving rates, female demographics, and the dynamics of social and behavioral roles of individuals

“…These spans greatly extend the maximum spans reported previously for Hawaii: 14 yr for males (Glockner‐Ferrari and Ferrari 1990, Craig and Herman 1997) and 15 yr for females (Craig and Herman 2000). These new resighting spans in Hawaii compare closely with those recently reported for southeast Alaska: 34 yr for males and 32 yr for females, based on resightings of seven humpbacks radio‐tagged there from 1976 to 1978 (Mizroch et al , in press).…”

“…Other studies of humpback whales by a variety of individual investigators have gathered sighting histories and through these examined selected behavioral, reproductive, and social dynamics of the species in their feeding or breeding grounds, or both. Studies most germane to the goals of the present study include the determination of calving rates (Baker et al 1987; Clapham and Mayo 1987, 1990; Glockner‐Ferrari and Ferrari 1990), fidelity to feeding sites (Perry et al 1990, Clapham et al 1993, Mizroch et al , in press) or to breeding sites (Craig and Herman 1997), migratory temporal and spatial patterns (Baker et al 1986, Craig et al 2003), behavior and social roles in the breeding grounds (Tyack and Whitehead 1983, Mobley and Herman 1985, Clapham et al 1992, Spitz et al 2002), and mating strategies (Mobley and Herman 1985, Clapham et al 1992, Craig et al 2002, Cerchio et al 2005, E. Herman et al 2008, Pack et al 2009).…”

Satellite Tagging and Biopsy Sampling of Killer Whales at Subantarctic Marion Island: Effectiveness, Immediate Reactions and Long-Term Responses

“…We show the potential of multievent trap-dependence models (compared to simpler approaches such as [29]–[31]) to assess responses to sampling while controlling for intrinsic heterogeneity and other covariates. We found no mid- (1 month) or long-term (<24 months) avoidance of the study site following biopsy or tagging and conclude that there is no evidence of behavioural changes due to sampling.…”

Trends in tagging of marine mammals: a review of marine mammal biologging studies

“…Papers addressing device influence on cetaceans mostly reported only immediate behavioural responses to deployments (e.g. Watkins 1981;Watkins and Tyack 1991;Hanson and Baird 1998;Schneider et al 1998), whereas one paper reported tissue healing around attachment sites (Sonne et al 2012) and one reported on the survival of tagged individuals (Mizroch et al 2011). I found no evidence for differences in the impact of medium-impact papers between types of outcome reported (ANOVA: F 11,373  1.7, p  0.07).…”