Twitter feed of the Azores Whale Lab - Cetacean Ecology Group, headed by Dr. Mónica A. Silva. Cetacean research in the North Atlantic for over 20 years.
Horta, Portugal
Joined October 2017
- Tweets414
- Following180
- Followers1K
- Likes297
On the 7th June, the Azores Whale Lab provided practical exercises on photo-id and bioacoustics to the Master’ students (University of the Azores). They had the opportunity to collect photo-id pictures of common dolphins and to acoustically detect and locate sperm whales
Our study on fin whale food talk is mentioned in this month's National Geographic portuguese edition, on an interesting article about fin whales seen off the coast of Portugal royalsocietypublishing.org/d… @MiriamRomagosa @OkeanosUac
In the afternoon (11th of June), the @AzWhaleLab headed to the high school “Escuela Secundaria Manuel de Arriaga” to present our work on understanding and protecting whales in the region, led by our colleague Daviana Berkowitz-Sklar @Daviberkos @sergiperezjorge @OkeanosUac
On Tuesday morning (11th of June), the @AzWhaleLab joined the Eco-Encontros event at elementary school “Escola Básica Integrada da Horta (Faial)” for a fun and educational marine life art activity. @OkeanosUac @Daviberkos
A reduction of prey size would require greater compensation to reach whales’ average daily metabolic requirements
The highest impact was on the decrease in prey size than on a reduction on prey size variability implying that foraging success rates are more sensitive to changes in average energy intake, than variability in energy intake.
A minimum foraging success rate of approximately 14% was necessary for female sperm whales to meet their energetic needs. Our results indicate that sperm whales can survive, exploit their habitat, and obtain enough energy to fulfil their energetic demands
New paper on sperm whale reponses to changes in prey structure. In-situ foraging data was used to determine daily energy acquisition and to identify the minimum required foraging success rate and explore potential responses to environmental changes. Check the thread 🧵
Species were grouped into four trophic guilds, segregated mainly by trophic position (TP): low-TP guild with three zooplanktivore baleen whales, mid-TP guild with micronektivores, high-TP guild with micronekton and nekton consumers, and a cluster with false killer whales only.
