Spatial variability in zooplankton abundance near feeding right whales in the Great South Channel

Characterization of Ship Traffic in Right Whale Critical Habitat

“…Future directions in evaluating where whales may be at greater risk include investigating the concordance of vessel traffic with effort-corrected whale distributions and habitat-use models (Best et al, 2001). The development of predictive models that incorporate key environmental variables may be useful to managers by providing them with a means to dynamically and proactively focus surveillance and management strategies in an effort to reduce the threat of ship strikes to right whales.…”

“…This finding has management implications because right whales are typically observed in the GSC during the late spring/early summer and are also roughly coincident with the 100-m isobath (Winn et al, 1986, Brown & Winn, 1989Kenney, 2001). In the GSC, whale aggregations associated with the 100-m isobath may be related to physical oceanographic features that support dense patches of zooplankton upon which right whales feed (Brown & Winn, 1986;Beardsley et al, 1996). Feeding whales may be distracted and thus be less capable of detecting-and, therefore, avoiding-approaching vessels (Watkins, 1986;Laist et al, 2001).…”

Variability inCalanusspp. abundance on fine- to mesoscales in an Arctic fjord: implications for little auk feeding

“…Pinel-Alloul 1995; Pitchford & Brindley 2001;Saito & Kiørboe 2001;Kiørboe et al 2005;Weimerskirch 2007). Other ecologically significant processes such as predatorÁprey interactions can operate on a wide range of scales, from the millimetre scale covered by foraging fish larvae to the 100 km covered by right whales feeding on copepods (Beardsley et al 1996;Pendleton et al 2009;Young et al 2009). To meet their energetic demands, many predatory species depend on the occurrence of prey patches of appropriate size to obtain sufficiently high feeding rates (e.g.…”

“…To meet their energetic demands, many predatory species depend on the occurrence of prey patches of appropriate size to obtain sufficiently high feeding rates (e.g. Beardsley et al 1996); thus, knowledge about spatial heterogeneity is crucial for these kinds of studies. While it is a wellknown phenomenon that plankton occurs in patches on different scales, to our knowledge there have been no studies looking into patch size and the ecological consequences of patchiness in an Arctic fjord system.…”

Copepod Aggregations: Influences of Physics and Collective Behavior

“…From net-tows, the densest patches were found to range in size from 100-1,000 m across, while the vertical extent of these patches is in the range of 1-10 m [3,28]. Observations of peak density within a patch are in the range of 10 3 -10 4 copepods/m 3 ( [4,28]), which is one to three orders-of-magnitude larger than typical values measured in the GOM in spring-time [2,28]. The temporal persistence of the patches is somewhere between hours and days; however, what determines this time scale is unknown (M. Baumgartner, pers.…”