University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology biologists used drone imagery to understand how nursing humpback whale mothers and their calves fare as they cross the Pacific Ocean.
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology biologists used drone imagery to understand how nursing humpback whale mothers and their calves fare as they cross the Pacific Ocean. Recent declines in North Pacific humpback whale reproduction and survival of calves highlight the need to understand how mother-calf pairs expend energy across their migratory cycle. The study was published in The Journal of Physiology.
The team used drone cameras to measure calf growth and maternal body condition days after calf birth in Hawaiʻi, and then compared these measurements to the body conditions of humpback females in Alaska feeding grounds, measuring pregnant and lactating (producing milk for nursing) females as well as humpback females whose reproductive status was unknown.
“A total of 2,410 measurements were taken from 1,659 individuals, with 405 repeat measurements from 137 lactating females used to track changes in maternal body volume over migration,” said Martin van Aswegen, Marine Mammal Research Program (MMRP) PhD candidate and lead author of the study.
Read more at University of Hawaii at Manoa
Photo Credit: foco44 via Pixabay
