Today Lenfest hosted a webinar for managers, stakeholders, scientists and the public about our recent paper: "Redefining North Atlantic right whale habitat‐use patterns under climate change". We had over 200 participants and more great questions than we had the time to answer. The webinar recording is available here. Today we cut, heated and bent rebar, drilled holes in PVC and mixed and poured concrete into old car tires to build moorings for our three SoundTrap hydrophones. Each of these moorings should weigh about 200lb, and the car tire means the edges of the mooring are pretty soft and unlikely to scrape the side of our deployment vessel. The rebar arches may provide a modicum of protection for our instrument, and the PVC holds the instrument away from the metal pieces, reducing risk of corrosion. We sunk eye bolts into the concrete for an anchor point or for a haul line. It was sweaty, satisfying work and we are one step closer to our passive acoustic monitoring plan for this winter's right whale migration to the Southeast US. Many thanks to @dombroski_julia for real inspiration in the mooring design! Today our new paper "Redefining North Atlantic right whale habitat-use patterns under climate change" was published in Limnology and Oceanography. In this study, we use right whale sightings per unit effort and prey abundances from the EcoMon and AZMP sampling programs to understand how right whale seasonal habitat use has changed between the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. In the 2000s, prey was relatively abundant in most foraging areas and right whales were targeting favored habitats in the Bay of Fundy and Scotian Shelf. However, the 1990s and 2010s showed similar declines in prey, thus right whales foraged more diffusely, in search of ideal conditions. In the 2010s in particular, right whales used Cape Cod Bay for a longer time period in the spring, and they began using new foraging habitats in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Cape Cod Bay. Our work was funded by Lenfest Ocean Program, and they have covered the release of the study here. |
AuthorErin Meyer-Gutbrod is an Assistant Professor at the University of South Carolina. Her lab researches human impacts to marine ecosysems. Archives
April 2024
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