Feeding grounds of the eastern South Pacific humpback whale population include the South Orkney Islands

• Autor(a) principal: Rosa, Luciano Dalla
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Outros Autores: Félix, Fernando, Stevick, Peter, Secchi, Eduardo Resende, Allen, Judith, Chater, Kim, Martin, Anthony Richard, Bassoi, Manuela
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da FURG (RI FURG)
• Texto Completo: http://repositorio.furg.br/handle/1/3440
• topic: Humpback whale; Photo-identification; Breeding stocks; Migration; South Orkney Islands; Southern Ocean

This paper reports on two photo-identified humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) that were sighted in different years in the proximity of the South Orkney Islands, at the boundary between the Scotia and Weddell seas(60854.5?S*46840.4?W and 60842.6?S*45833?W). One of the whales had been previously sighted off Ecuador, a breeding ground for the eastern South Pacific population. The other whale was subsequently resighted in Bransfield Strait, off the western Antarctic Peninsula, a well-documented feeding ground for the same population. These matches give support to a hypothesis that the area south of the South Orkney Islands is occupied by whales from the eastern South Pacific breeding stock. Consequently, we propose 408W as a new longitudinal boundary between the feeding grounds associated with the eastern South Pacific and western South Atlantic breeding stocks.