Aloha Colleagues:
I would like to share with you the recent publication of the
following article: Lammers, M.O., Fisher-Pool, P., Au, W.W.L., Wong,
K., Meyer, C. and Brainard, R., (2011). “Humpback whale Megaptera
novaeangliae song reveals wintering activity in the
Northwestern Hawaiian Islands” Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser. 423:261-268.
The abstract is below:
The main Hawaiian Islands (MHI) are the principal breeding ground
for humpback whales in the North Pacific. Over the past 3 decades,
population recovery from whaling-era losses has resulted in a steady
increase in the number of whales wintering in Hawaiian waters and a
geographic expansion of their distribution in the MHI. Until
recently, no existing evidence showed that this expansion included
the islands, atolls, and banks of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands
(NWHI). To better understand the occurrence of humpback whales in
the NWHI, 9 ecological acoustic recorders (EARs) were deployed at
sites throughout the archipelago to record the occurrence of
humpback whale song, an indicator of winter breeding activity. Song
was found to be prevalent at Maro Reef, Lisianski Island, and French
Frigate Shoals but was also recorded at Kure Atoll, Midway Atoll,
and Pearl and Hermes Atoll. Both the timing and abundance of song at
several locations closely followed trends observed on Oahu, which is
one of the MHI, strongly suggesting that humpback whales use the
NWHI as a wintering area. This finding is of particular relevance in
light of recent suggestions that, based on photo-identification
data, a yet undocumented wintering area exists somewhere in the
central North Pacific. We propose that the NWHI could be that area.
The paper can be obtained as an open access article at: http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v423/
or by emailing lammers@hawaii.edu.
Kind regards,
Marc
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Marc O. Lammers, Ph.D.
Assistant Researcher
Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology
P.O. Box 1346
Kaneohe, HI 96744
Tel: 808-375-0010
Fax: 808-247-5831
Email: lammers@hawaii.edu