Abstract
We investigated habitat utilization in Blainville’s beaked whale, Mesoplodon densirostris, in the northern Bahamas and, as such, this is the first analysis of fine-scale habitat utilization of any member of the genus Mesoplodon. We divided the area into 500×500 m grid squares and each square was assigned a classification for presence or absence of Blainville’s beaked whales, along with details of water depth, seabed gradient and seabed aspect. All squares where Blainville’s beaked whales occurred had gradients from 68 to 296 m/km and depths from 136 to 1,319 m and most faced northeast compared with 0–526 m/km, 10–3,000 m and all aspects for the whole study area. Generalized additive models and classification trees indicated that, in order of importance, aspect, gradient and depth were related to occurrence of Blainville’s beaked whales within the study area. We hypothesize that the relationships between habitat utilization and these topographic variables relates to the effects of interactions between a deepwater current and the seabed topography on preferred prey. Locally, prey animals may be concentrated in areas with a northeast aspect, intermediate gradients and depths between 200 and 1,000 m where the Deep Western Boundary Current is forced towards the surface by the local topography. These are the areas where Blainville’s beaked whales preferentially occurred.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the people and businesses of Abaco who provided support during the undertaking of this research, particularly P. Toler, B. Toler, T. Cornea, C. Claridge, M. Santillo and A. Bain. Special thanks go to N. Hauser and H. Peckham for their advice and support through out the duration of this project and for their help in gathering the data analysed here. We would also like to thank D. Claridge and K. Balcomb of Bahamas Marine Mammal Survey (BMMS) for their advice and initial support in setting up this research, as well as S. Bannon, A. Grant, G. Rodriguez-Ferrer, L. Leadbetter, J. Schikora, C. Lindsey, P. Irvine and K. Collier for their help through out this research. Finally, the author would like to thank N. Voss for making time to discuss cephalopod biology, and G. Pierce, P.Bolye, J. Learmonth, P. Tyack and one anonymous reviewer for their comments on the manuscript. This research was funded by the Emily B. Shane Award (1997) from the Society of Marine Mammalogy, the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society and The Lerner-Gray Fund from the American Museum of Natural History. The Center for Cetacean Research and Conservation (CCRC), Brunswick, Maine, provided additional logistical support through out the field work. Photo-identification was conducted in association with D. Claridge of BMMS.
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Communicated by O. Kinne, Oldendorf/Luhe
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MacLeod, C.D., Zuur, A.F. Habitat utilization by Blainville’s beaked whales off Great Abaco, northern Bahamas, in relation to seabed topography. Marine Biology 147, 1–11 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-004-1546-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-004-1546-9