Discovery of whale feeding zone triggers name for cover

Satellite monitoring of New Zealand southern proper whales, or tohorā, has revealed a key feeding location about 500kms south of Australia that must be protected, University of Auckland scientists say.

Scientists tracked 25 tohorā from the subantarctic Maungahuka/Auckland Islands because the whales travelled by means of the Southern Ocean in a study printed within the journal Global Ecology and Conservation.

“It turned out that one destination was by far the most popular,” says Dr Leena Riekkola, a Rutherford Postdoctoral Fellow within the School of Biological Sciences, who was the lead creator of the analysis paper. “Ninety percent of the whales travelled to a zone south of Australia, rich in prey, where different waters converge.”

Protecting the zone would assist to increase that rarest factor: a conservation success story. After dwindling to as few as 400 people early final century due to whaling, southern proper whales now quantity round 15,000 globally.

“This work highlights why this region should be a marine protected area under the High Seas Treaty,” says Dr Emma Carroll, the senior creator of the examine. “Other animals like seabirds, sharks, and seals all rely on it, too.”

The High Seas Treaty – formally often known as the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Agreement – will let nations suggest areas the place fishing and different actions are restricted. It will come into drive as soon as extra nations have signed up.

 

“Once ratified, this treaty could provide a way of protecting these critical feeding areas for whales, but also seabirds, seals, fish and sharks,” says Riekkola.

The space south of Australia stretches over 2,000km in an east-west course and about 1,000km north-south and key feeding areas are close to the Subtropical Front, which is a boundary between heat, salty subtropical waters and cooler Antarctic waters.

The zone is a vacation spot for the whales from October to January, whereas they winter on the Maungahuka/Auckland Islands.

Fifteen Australian whales tracked within the examine had extra various foraging grounds, main scientists to ponder whether or not they are going to higher at adapting to the inevitable shifts in prey places due to local weather change.

The analysis was funded by Royal Society Te Apārangi Rutherford Discovery and Postdoctoral Fellowships, Live Ocean, Lou and Iris Fisher Charitable Trust, Joyce Fisher Charitable Trust, Brian Sheth/Sangreal Foundation, UOA Science Faculty Research Development Fund, International Whaling Commission – Southern Ocean Research Partnership, Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, DOC, the Cawthron Institute, Marine Predator Research Group at Macquarie University, and the Rae Family Foundation to UWA.