Understanding the Foraging Ecology of Beaked and Short-Finned Pilot Whales in Hawaiian Waters

Abstract

The overall goal of our research is to understand beaked whale foraging and to learn how to alleviate acoustic encounters between Navy assets and beaked whales and other deep diving odontocetes. Understanding of the characteristics and dynamics of the prey field is critical in understanding the foraging behavior and life cycle of beaked whales. The movement patterns of any animals are strongly affected by the availability of food resources, so in order to understand the foraging behavior of beaked whales, the behavior of the prey, the oceanographic conditions affecting the presence of the prey and how the whales interact with the prey field all needs to be better understood.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 30, 2015
Accession Number
AD1013942

Entities

People

  • Jeffrey Drazen
  • Whitlow W. Au

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acoustic Images
  • Animals
  • Cameras
  • Deep Diving
  • Deep Scattering Layers
  • Detection
  • Diurnal Variations
  • Diving
  • Fish
  • High Resolution
  • Life Cycles
  • Marine Biology
  • Marine Mammals
  • Odontocetes
  • Scattering
  • Sonar
  • Video Cameras

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Marine Mammal Biology