Abstract
Fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus) along the western United States are managed as a single stock whose range overlaps with the California Current System (CCS). We used sighting histories of 932 individual fin whales photographed in the CCS from 1987 to 2018 to investigate movements and residency patterns within and among latitudinal regions. While 167 whales (18%) were sighted in multiple years, only 4 were documented in both the Northern and Southern CCS, with a boundary at 38.5 °N. A permutation test of annual recaptures suggested movements among latitudinal regions of the CCS occurred significantly less than expected if whales moved freely within current stock boundaries. Fifteen whales were sighted in 6–10 different years on an average of 30 different days (range: 8–101 days), all in the heavily sampled Southern California Bight (SCB). There, we used lagged identification rates (LIRs) to assess whether the probability of re-sighting an individual over time differed from random values for the region overall, within and beyond 25 km of the mainland, and by season. Our results suggest that the SCB is used seasonally by whales from the larger CCS stock but is also home to a smaller, year-round resident subpopulation. This latter group increasingly uses the nearshore waters of the SCB, where they are exposed to significantly elevated levels of anthropogenic activity.
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Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the tremendous contributions made by citizen scientists and volunteer naturalists. Had these individuals not invested their time and resources to photograph these whales and ensure their photos made it to us, this work would not have been possible. We wish to specifically recognize the following individuals and institutions for the important roles they have played in this effort: Kera Mathes, Harbor Breeze Cruises, and the many interns at the Aquarium of the Pacific; Marilia Olio and Hayley Newell at Happywhale; Alisa Schulman-Janiger; Nancy Black; Bruce Mate; Christina Fahy; Annie Douglas, Kiirsten Flynn, John Calambokidis, and the other staff of Cascadia Research Collective; Jane and Frank Falcone; Naval Undersea Warfare Center Marine Mammal Monitoring on Ranges group; US Navy Southern California Offshore Range staff; Scripps Institution of Oceanography; the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary; and San Diego Whale Watch. We thank the editors, Leszek Karczmarski and Stephen C.Y. Chan, for their rigorous and very thoughtful editorship.
Funding
Though a large portion of the data included in the study were opportunistic contributions from citizen science platforms, a subset of the data were collected and processed under awards issued to Marine Ecology & Telemetry Research (METR) and Cascadia Research Collective (CRC) by the US Navy Living Marine Resources Program, the US Office of Naval Research, and US Navy Pacific Fleet from 2006 to 2019. Analysis and write-up were supported in part through the Californian Cooperative Ecosystem Study Unit funded by the US Navy Pacific Fleet. Oregon State University (OSU) received funding for data collection from the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Packard Foundation toward the Tagging of Pacific Pelagics program (2004–2005), and the US Navy Pacific Fleet via HDR, Inc (2014–2018). Initial catalog preparation and data processing through 2011 were supported by a contract from the US National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) Southwest Region.
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EF: project oversight, data collection, data management, manuscript preparation. EK: data processing, manuscript preparation. EK: data processing, data analysis, manuscript preparation. JB: data collection, data analysis, manuscript revision. JS: data collection, data processing, manuscript revision. TC: data collection, manuscript revision. CH: data collection, data processing, manuscript revision. DP: data collection, manuscript revision.
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METR and OSU continue to receive funding from the US Navy for this and related work.
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Fin whales photographed by Cascadia Research Collective (CRC) and Marine Ecology & Telemetry Research (METR) were primarily approached under scientific research permits 540–1811-04 and 16111 issued to CRC by the US NMFS, with oversight by the CRC Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). Whales photographed by Oregon State University (OSU) were approached under NMFS permits 369–1757 and 14856 with oversight by the OSU IACUC.
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This article is a contribution to the special issue on “Individual Identification and Photographic Techniques in Mammalian Ecological and Behavioural Research – Part 2: Field Studies and Applications” — Editors: Leszek Karczmarski, Stephen C.Y. Chan, Scott Y.S. Chui and Elissa Z. Cameron.
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Appendix
See Figs. A1, A2, A3, A4 and Table A1 .
A fin whale surfaces along the Southern California coast. One of the earliest members of the catalog used for this study, this individual was first identified in the outer waters of the SCB in fall of 1995
Identifying the inshore-offshore boundaries for interchange analyses. Rates of interchange- the proportion of individuals that were identified on both sides of a boundary at the specified distance from the mainland- for the entire CCS (left) and the SCB (right). Shaded vertical lines indicate the cutoffs used to assess large-scale inshore/offshore movements in the CCS (200 km) and fine-scale movements between the inner and outer zones of the SCB (25 km)
Permutation test results for broadscale interchange events. Rates of regional interchange (i.e., the proportion of all interchange events that involved movements into or out of a given region) of fin whales in the California Current System, as observed in 2009–2018 (red dotted lines) and as would be expected according to a null model of random mixing (gray histograms) based upon randomization (10,000 iterations)
Within-region recapture rates. Within-region recapture rates of fin whales in the California Current System, as observed in 2009–2018 (red dotted lines) and as would be expected according to a null model of random mixing (gray histograms) based upon randomization (10,000 iterations)
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Falcone, E.A., Keene, E.L., Keen, E.M. et al. Movements and residency of fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus) in the California Current System. Mamm Biol 102, 1445–1462 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42991-022-00298-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42991-022-00298-4