Project overview
Funded by the Antarctic Wildlife Research Fund.
There is a clear and urgent need to better understand the spatiotemporal characteristics of interactions between baleen whales and the Antarctic krill fishery. This involves dynamics (e.g., movement, time-spent, concentration) and typical spatial scales, both of whales and fishing vessels. Fortunately, animal biologging and vessel tracking now provides data than can be used to address this need.
We will address this knowledge gap by investigating the spatiotemporal characteristics of humpback whale foraging behaviour in the Western Antarctic Peninsula as well as the fishing behaviour of krill fishing vessels in the same region.
We will do this using existing humpback whale tracking data and AIS data on the movements of krill fishing vessels in a novel framework where we model the movements of krill fishing vessels as consumers that target the same prey as humpback whales. Using this approach, we will calculate spatiotemporally explicit geographic and functional overlap between humpback whales and fisheries.
There is a clear and urgent need to better understand the spatiotemporal characteristics of interactions between baleen whales and the Antarctic krill fishery. This involves dynamics (e.g., movement, time-spent, concentration) and typical spatial scales, both of whales and fishing vessels. Fortunately, animal biologging and vessel tracking now provides data than can be used to address this need.
We will address this knowledge gap by investigating the spatiotemporal characteristics of humpback whale foraging behaviour in the Western Antarctic Peninsula as well as the fishing behaviour of krill fishing vessels in the same region.
We will do this using existing humpback whale tracking data and AIS data on the movements of krill fishing vessels in a novel framework where we model the movements of krill fishing vessels as consumers that target the same prey as humpback whales. Using this approach, we will calculate spatiotemporally explicit geographic and functional overlap between humpback whales and fisheries.
