Meynecke explains that this research is critical because climate change will begin to impinge on their usual patterns: "The tropical waters will get too warm (above 28☌ is not suitable for humpback whales) and Arctic waters will have less food to offer." The tags can be set to detach after a few hours of collecting data, and can then be retrieved. Jan-Olaf Meynecke A humpback with the CATS cam digital tracker attached. Through that, they can understand more about what habitats they frequent, and how much energy they spend along the way. The tags can capture a humpback's fine-scale movements underwater, helping Meynecke and other researchers build a more accurate model of how the humpbacks backtrack, detour, and meander on their migrations. "And they're in no rush because they're actually just spending some time together." "We've seen whales that are just, you know, swimming around each other," Meynecke says. They're busy under the water, doing all sorts of mammalian things: courtship, friendship, fights over females, and simply hanging out. In 2019, Meynecke and his colleagues started attaching tracking tags called CATS cams to humpbacks for brief periods, as they swam along the Australian Gold Coast, either heading north to warmer tropical waters for breeding, or south toward the colder waters off Antarctica, where they feed.Īt a basic level, the digital data prove that migrating whales don't travel in a straight line, coming up only to breathe or breach every once in a while. It's difficult and expensive work, often requiring long hours in boats under rough conditions. The marine scientist has been tracking the migrations of humpback whales since 2010, from his scientific home base at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. Meynecke did not set out to study cetacean skin care regimes.
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