What is it about?
Sperm whales are known for diving long and deep, but the full characteristics of their dives are not known because existing dive records are of limited duration. We used an electronic tag capable of continuously recording their diving for periods of up to one month (the advanced behavior tag, ADB). We attached this ADB tag to 27 sperm whales in the Gulf of California, Mexico, and report here on the results of those attachments.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
With the ADB tag, we have significantly expanded the duration of dive records and the number of dives available to more completely characterize sperm whale dive behavior. These results have implications for advancing our understanding of dive physiology and activity budgets of a major predator in the ocean. This information constitutes an important baseline of sperm whale dive behavior for future studies looking at how this behavior may change in other parts of the world, or in response to human activities or climate change.
Perspectives
Analyzing these continuous records (every second for up to 27 days) of sperm whale activity, and coming up with statistical approaches to reduce the data to the most meaningful pieces of information, was a challenging but fun and rewarding exercise.
Dr Daniel M Palacios
Oregon State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Sperm whale dive behavior characteristics derived from intermediate-duration archival tag data, Ecology and Evolution, August 2017, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/ece3.3322.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
