Biology Seminar Series with Dr. Kimberely T.A. Davies-FR

Event Details:

The Biology Seminar Series is proud to host Dr. Kimberley Davies from Dalhousie University.

Dr. Davies's talk is entitled "Causes and consequences of variation in foraging habitat use by the North Atlantic right whale."

Abstract:

The habitats and habits of large whales remain elusive despite significant advancements in monitoring technologies over the last two decades. Our understanding of basic whale ecology, risks from human stressors, and ultimately our ability to conserve these animals in a changing ocean are each constrained by our ability to measure them persistently and synoptically.

In this talk, I will discuss new approaches that are improving our knowledge of the ecological, environmental and anthropogenic processes that drive risks to a critically endangered marine predator, the North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis, hereafter right whale). Right whales are zooplanktivore specialists that feed on aggregations of lipid-rich Calanus spp. copepods, and the aggregations often occur in areas of intense fishing and high shipping traffic. Right whales concentrate in environmental conditions that facilitate Calanus persistence; these are typically the highest risk conditions that require targeted management.

In a recent work, I show how right whales have migrated away from some protected foraging habitat-areas due to changes in ocean circulation patterns that have shifted Calanus phenology, likely causing a match-mismatch between whale migration patterns and the timing of seasonal maximum food energy-density. This 8-year-long change has had severe impacts on calving and human-caused mortality, triggering a conservation emergency that precipitated a governance paradigm shift toward adaptive conservation at the federal level. My group has been developing autonomous acoustic monitoring technologies as an efficient tools to measure habitat use of right and other large whales while delivering distributional data in real-time to ocean industries and managers to inform adaptive management strategies. I will discuss pilot studies of the system from deployments on the Scotian Shelf and Gulf of St. Lawrence, where we are using it to model regional habitat occupancy, parameterize acoustic detection range and quantify multi-species habitat partitioning.

Building: Bailey Hall

Room Number: 146