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Satellite tracking of pygmy blue whales

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(Balaenoptera musculus brevicauda) off

Western Australia

Final Report – May 2012

M.C. Double1, K.C.S. Jenner2, M-N. Jenner2, I. Ball1, S. Laverick1, N. Gales1

1 Australian Marine Mammal Centre, Australian Antarctic Division, 203 Channel

Highway, Kingston, Tasmania 7150 2 Centre for Whale Research (Western Australia) Inc., PO Box 1622, Fremantle

WA 6959


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Satellite tracking of pygmy blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus

brevicauda) off Western Australia

Summary

Summary

This study aimed to describe the migratory distribution and behaviour of pygmy blue whales

that feed in the Perth Canyon region off the coast of Western Australia. A total of twelve tags

were successfully deployed on blue whales between the 14th March and the 6th April although

four performed poorly with no uplinks, only Z class data or the tag ceased transmitting within a

few days of deployment. The 10 whales that provided some location data were tracked from 1 to

162 days (mean = 43.3 days; SD = 47.8) for a total of 20,621 km (mean = 2,291 km; max: 8,815)

and the total net distance moved from the first to last location was 9,606 km (mean = 1,067 km;

max: 3227 km). Following tagging several whales remained in the Perth Canyon/Naturaliste

Plateau for over a month whereas others migrated north immediately. On their migration north

the tagged whales were located offshore (usually between 40 and 100km) and showed distinct

changes from high (~100km/day) to lower (<50km/day) travel distances. The lower rates of

travel were seen in the Perth Canyon/Naturaliste Plateau, North West Cape/Ningaloo Reef and

the Banda/Molucca Sea regions. Three whales were tracked through to North West Cape and

each then took a similar bearing (approximately NE) to cross the Timor Sea as did a tracked

whale from a previous study. Two whales provided locations from the northern terminus of

their migration in the Banda and Molucca Seas. These observations confirm that the Banda and

Molucca Seas is the northern destination for this population of pygmy blue whales and is

therefore the likely calving area. These data also show that the greater Perth Canyon/Naturaliste

Plateau region of Western Australia is a region of high and often prolonged activity for these

whales.


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Introduction

Satellite telemetry has been used routinely in wildlife biology for nearly two decades and has

been applied successfully in studies of many marine organisms including penguins, albatrosses,

seals and even sharks (Bonadonna et al., 2000; Gifford et al., 2007; Jouventin et al., 1994;

Weimerskirch et al., 1993). The use of this technology in understanding the migration of large

whales has, however, lagged behind other taxa largely due to the inability to catch and attach

tags to such large species. It is only relatively recently that research groups developed reliable

tags that can be implanted into free-ranging whales (e.g. Gales et al., 2009; Heide-Jørgensen et

al., 2001b; Mate et al., 2007). Such tags have now been used in studies of many large whales

species such as blue (Heide-Jørgensen et al., 2001b; Mate et al., 2007), humpback (Dalla Rosa et

al., 2008; Gales et al., 2009; Lagerquist et al., 2008), sei (Olsen et al., 2009), right (Baumgartner &

Mate, 2005), bowhead (Mate et al., 2000) and minke whales (Heide-Jørgensen et al., 2001a).

Satellite tracking studies of whales or other cetacea in Australian waters are few and therefore

their movement patterns and migratory routes are generally poorly described. In one of the first

studies, Gales et al. (2009) deployed 16 tags on humpback whales migrating south off New South

Wales and followed their migration paths around Tasmania and New Zealand and through to

Antarctic waters. In the same year five tags were attached to five long-finned pilot whales prior

to their release after stranding in north-western Tasmania (Gales, R. et al., in press). Although

these studies represent significant progress in the development of satellite tags for large whales

the technology and reliability of attachment remains somewhat erratic and poor tag

performance remains common for all research groups in this field (e.g. Gales et al., 2010; Gales et

al., 2009; Garrigue et al., 2010; Mate et al., 2007).

In April 2009 three tags were deployed on pygmy blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus

brevicauda) off the Perth Canyon, Western Australia (~32.0o S, 115.0oE). The longevity of these

tags ranged from 8 to 137 days and the these whales were tracked for 260 to 6,200 km (Gales et

al., 2010). The whale with the greatest tag life was tracked from the Perth Canyon north along

the western coast of Australia; it then passed through the Savu Sea and Wetar Basin and then

entered the Banda Sea east of the Indonesian island of Wetar. These data provided the first

definitive link between the blue whales that feed off the Perth Canyon (Bannister et al., 2006;

Jenner et al., 2008) and those that occur around Indonesia (Branch et al., 2007). This movement

is concordant with the proposed ‘Tasmania to Indonesia’ population described by Branch et al.

(2007).

The specific objective of this project was to deploy up to 30 satellite tags on pygmy blue whales

in the Perth Canyon near Rottenest Island, Western Australia in order to provide a greater

understanding of the movement and migratory behaviours of pygmy blue whales in Australian

waters and beyond. Pygmy blue whales occur predictably in the Perth Canyon and are known to

migrate north through this region in February to April however, their habitat use, feeding areas

and migratory routes have not been described in any detail (Gales et al., 2010; McCauley &

Jenner, 2010). Such information can be used to better assess and mitigate the potential impacts

of industrial development, shipping and resource extraction off Western Australia and is

therefore of great interest to industry, managers and regulators.

Methods


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The satellite tags used in this study have a custom-designed, anchor section joined to a housing

manufactured by Wildlife Computers (Redmond, Washington, USA) containing the Spot 5

transmitter (see Gales et al., 2009). The tags were designed to implant up to a maximum of

290mm into the skin, blubber, interfacial layers and outer muscle mass of the whale (generally

just forward and to the left or right side of the dorsal fin). The front 80mm of the tag

disarticulates from back section of the tag post-deployment; a flexible 5mm multi-braided

stainless steel wire maintains a coupling between the two parts. Retention of the tag is

maintained through two actively sprung plates, and a circle of passively deployed ‘petals.’ All

external components of the tag were built from stainless steel and the tags were surgically

sterilised prior to deployment.

Each tag was deployed using a compressed air gun (modified ARTS, Restech) set at a pressure of

between 7.5 and 10 bar (cf. Gales et al., 2009; Olsen et al., 2009). When fired from the air gun the

tags were attached to a purpose-designed projectile carrier. Retention teeth on the projectile

carrier grip a metal ring fitted to the end of the tag. When the tag makes contact with a whale,

the rapid deceleration of the tag and carrier withdraws the retention teeth and releases the

projectile carrier (Double et al., 2010). The metal ring used to attach the carrier is designed to

fall off in time to reduce the drag of the tag. Tags were deployed from the bow-sprit of a 5.8m

rigid-hulled inflatable boat at a range of 3-8m (see Table 1).

Once deployed, the first dive of the whale will activate the tag. The tag will then transmit upon

each surfacing if it has not transmitted during the previous 30 seconds. On the day of

deployment all tags were set to transmit until 00:00 hrs UTC; after that time they were set to

transmit on a 6hr on, 18hr off duty cycle until the tag fell off the whale, malfunctioned or the two

AA lithium batteries were exhausted. Following each deployment, we used a hand-held receiver

to check that the tag was transmitting. Whenever possible all the whales encountered during the

research period were photographed for photo-identification studies and detailed photographs

were taken of each tag deployment. On deployment we also recorded deployment time,

deployment location, tagging distance, gun pressure, percentage implantation of the tag, pod

size, pod composition, the whale’s reaction to the deployment and the weather and sea

conditions.

During the transmission periods, locations were obtained via the Argos System of polar-orbiting

satellites (Argos, 1990). Each location was allocated a level of accuracy by the Argos System.

Categories 3, 2, 1 have associated error predictions of 250m, 500m and 1500m respectively

whereas categories 0, A, and B have no associated error prediction. All Argos locations were

filtered using the Speed-Distance-Angle function in the R package (R Development Core Team,

2007) ‘Argosfilter’ (Freitas et al., 2008) which has been designed specifically for marine mammal

tracking data and is based on the algorithm developed by McConnell et al. (1992). This function

removes locations from the data set based on unrealistic swimming speeds, distances between

successive locations and turning angles. The conservative default setting of a maximum

swimming speed of 7.2 km/h was applied in this study.

Great circle distances between locations were calculated using an equation that assumes a

spherical Earth of radius 6371 km. Analyses based on distances used the general tagging

location -22.56 S, 113.62 E (WGS 1984) as the 0km reference.


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The R package TRIP (Sumner, 2006) was used to interpolate locations at one hour intervals.

ArcGIS (ESRI Software) with Hawth's Analysis Tools for ArcGIS (Beyer, 2004) was used to

calculate the total distance traveled and net distance traveled from the first location in addition

to Kernel Density Estimates.

When possible, skin biopsies were collected for genetic analyses (Table 1) using a biopsy dart

fired from a modified .22 Paxarms rifle (Krutzen et al., 2002). Biopsies were usually collected

simultaneously with the deployment of the satellite tag. Biopsies were stored in 70% ethanol

and DNA subsequently extracted using the Tissue DNA purification kit for the Maxwell 16 DNA

extraction robot (Promega Corporation). The sexes of the tagged whales were determined using

a 5’ exonuclease assay of the polymorphisms in the sex-linked Zinc Finger genes as described by

Morin et al. (Morin et al., 2005).

Results

During the 28-day research period (14th March to 10th April 2011), 20 days were spent at sea. A

total of 35 individual blue whales were sighted in 33 sightings events (average pod size = 1.09;

Figure 1) during the cumulative 128 hours on effort within the Perth Canyon region (>200m

depth).

From the 33 sightings, 12 satellite tags were deployed, biopsy samples were collected from 8

whales (7 tagged whales) and photo-identification data were collected for 13 whales. Although

many whales were sighted during the study period satellite tag deployments were often

hindered by poor weather and/or low light condition although on occasion whales actively

avoided a close approach of the RHIB.

Of the 12 tags, 4 performed very poorly providing either no uplinks at all (N=2), only Z class data

(i.e. no location information, just an uplink - N=1), or failed very quickly (N=1). The most likely

explanation for the poor performance of these four tags is electronic or mechanical failure. We

believe it is unlikely the tag migrated out of the whale rapidly.

The performance of the nine tags that provided location data is summarised in Table 2 and the

tracks provided by these tags are presented in Figures 4 to 6. Whales were tracked from 1 to 162

days (mean = 43.3 days; SD = 47.8). A total of 1056 locations were received, 801 of which were

not removed by the filtering process and therefore considered reliable (Table 2, see Methods).

Whales that provided more than 1 location were tracked for a total of 20,621 km (mean = 2,291

km; max: 8,815) and the total net distance moved from the first to last location was 9,606 km

(mean = 1,067 km; max: 3227 km).

In respect to tag longevity the tags in this study performed reasonably well despite the high

initial failure (Figure 2). Although many tags provided locations over a long period, the number

of locations received from each tag was very low compared to our other studies. Figure 3a&b

show the high proportion of days where few or no locations are received from a tag that is still

active. Another tag (98141) only provided data after several weeks of no uplinks, this suggests

the tag may only have become active as it extruded out from the whale.

Despite tag attrition and the relatively low number of locations delivered by each tag, eight

whales were tracked for over three weeks, four whales provided detailed tracks as they


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migrated north along the west coast of Australia and two whales were tracked to the northern

most point on their migration in the Banda and Molucca Seas (Figures 4 to 6).

Following tagging the whales displayed a diversity of behaviours with some immediately

tracking north on their migration up the coast of Australia whereas others spent over a month in

the Perth Canyon and Naturaliste Plateau region of south-western Australia (Figure 7). When

migrating north the whales tended to be 40 to 100km from the coast and were rarely closer to

shore (Figure 5). This distribution is reflected in the depth of the water column at the locations

received (Figure 9) where whales were almost always in over 200m of water and commonly in

over 1000m. Once away from the Australian coast the water depths exceed 4000m. Even in the

Banda and Molucca Seas the water depth is over 2000m.

Daily linear travel distances from the tagging location were highly variable but showed some

distinct patterns. Close to the tagging location in the Perth Canyon and Naturaliste Plateau

region, travel distances were frequently less than 50 km. In contrast, median travel distances of

approximately 100km per day were achieved immediately after the whales migrated north from

this region (Figure 10). Interestingly, they slow again in the North West Cape/Ningaloo Reef

region of north-western Australia before migrating between 50 to 100km per day before

reaching Indonesia where travel speeds drop again to a rate very similar to that seen in the

Perth Canyon and Naturaliste Plateau.

Although likely to be influenced strongly by deployment location and tag longevity, the relative

occupancy duration (Figure 11) illustrates the general offshore distribution (40 to 100km

offshore) of these whales and the areas of concentrated activity in the Perth Canyon/Naturaliste

Plateau, North West Cape/Ningaloo Reef and the Banda and Molucca Seas.

Discussion

This satellite-tracking study of pygmy blue whales provides important new information on the

feeding and migration behaviour of these endangered animals. In total whales were tracked for

over 20,000 km (801 locations) and detailed migratory behaviour for several individual whales

was revealed.

In the first successful deployment of satellite tags on this population of blue whales Gales et al.

(2010) tracked a single whale from the Perth Canyon region to the Banda Sea. This data

provided the first definitive link between the blue whales that feed off the Perth Canyon and

those that occur around Indonesia (Branch et al., 2007). The single whale migrated north along

the west coast of Australia to North West Cape where it headed on an approximate bearing of

30o to 45o to cross the Timor Seas passing through the Savu Sea and Wetar Basin to enter the

Banda Sea east of the Indonesian island of Wetar. This current study provides new data to

indicate that this migration route and final destination appears to be common to this population.

Three whales were tracked through to North West Cape and each then took a similar bearing to

cross the Timor Sea. Unfortunately only one whale was tracked from the Perth Canyon to the

northern end of its migration and it too went to the Banda Sea where it continued to provide

location data for several weeks. This whale did not enter the Banda Sea via the Savu Sea but

instead passed East of Timor and entered near the Leti Islands. Given the approximate bearings

these whales take from North West Cape, they tend to leave Australian waters when north of

Broome to Cape Londonderry in the Kimberley. One other tagged whale from this study did not

provide location data on its migration north but did provide location data for three weeks while


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located in the Molucca Sea (north of the Banda Sea) and very near the Equator. This too would

suggest that this region is the common destination for the northern migration of whales that

feed off the Perth Canyon.

On their migration north the tagged whales migrated offshore, usually between 40 and 100km,

and showed distinct changes from high (~100km/day) to lower (<50km/day) travel distances.

The lower rates of travel were seen in the Perth Canyon/Naturaliste Plateau, North West

Cape/Ningaloo Reef and the Banda/Molucca Sea regions. It is known that feeding occurs off the

Perth Canyon but it not clear whether these whales feed off Ningaloo Reef and in the Banda Sea.

Most baleen whales show high to low latitude migrations - at high latitudes they feed and at low

latitudes they calve. The timing of movement described in this study would suggest that these

whales migrate to the Banda/Molucca Seas to calve and breed. However, these whales are

presumably adapted to exploit widely dispersed and ephemeral temperate and tropical food

sources; therefore they may also feed in the Banda/Molucca Seas region too.

Cumulatively our tagging data now show that the greater Perth Canyon/Naturaliste Plateau

region is a feeding area for these whales. Although the whales may concentrate their activities

over the Perth Canyon, they travel over larger areas and can spend many weeks in this region.

On leaving this area, travel speeds are high through to North West Cape which would suggest

feeding opportunities are less common between Perth Canyon and North West Cape.

Tag longevity was reasonable for this deployment but the number of uplinks per day was

surprisingly low for these tags. Indeed the performance differed greatly from tags deployed on

humpback whales in the same year and a similar region (cf. Figure 3, Double et al., 2011). The

most likely explanation for this result is the location of the tag on the whale. If the tag is low on

the body then it may not transmit on each surfacing. However, field operatives did not indicate

that these tags were poorly placed and photographs would suggest the placement is similar to

tags deployed previously on the same species that provided richer and more consistent data

streams. The diagnostic data for these tags has been sent to the manufacturer for further

investigation.

Acknowledgements

The field-based research team for this project was Curt Jenner, Micheline Jenner, Dale Peterson,

Sarah Laverick and Mike Double plus other crew. This project would not have been possible

without the skill, expertise and dedication of Eric King, our engineer at the AAD. We are also

very grateful to Dave Watts and David Smith of the Australian Antarctic Data Centre for their

assistance with data curation and GIS respectively. We thank the Western Australian Marine

Science Institute (WAMSI) for partly funding this project. WAMSI received financial support for

this project from Woodside Energy Ltd as the operator the Browse LNG Development.

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Table 1. Summary information of the twelve tag deployments on pygmy blue whales in the Perth Canyon, Western Australia.

Number Argos number Date Time (local) Place Latitude Longitude Sex Maturity Group Size

1 53330 06/04/2011 12:46 Perth Canyon -31.99 114.98 Female Adult 1

2 53734 18/03/2011 14:58 Perth Canyon -32.04 114.91 Unknown Adult 1



5 98108 30/03/2011 15:48 Perth Canyon -31.99 115.03 Male Adult 1









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Table 2. Summary of the post-filtering location data received from the nine satellite tags deployed on pygmy blue whales in the Perth Canyon region

of Western Australia 2011. Only tags that provided location are presented. The number of locations for each Argos accuracy category is given in the

last six columns (see Methods). All dates and times are reported in UTC.

Tag Start Date Last Date

Longevity

(days)

No. of

locations

Net distance

travelled (km)

Total distance

travelled (km) 3 2 1 0 A B

53330 6/04/2011 6/04/2011 1 5 3.6 11.9 1 0 0 1 0 3

53734 18/03/2011 16/04/2011 29 123 252.1 1413.9 0 8 18 7 41 49

53791 30/03/2011 16/04/2011 18 70 1219.6 1657.8 0 7 8 9 15 31

98106 28/03/2011 3/05/2011 36 15 1386.6 1669.4 0 0 1 1 0 13

98108 30/03/2011 17/05/2011 49 83 2355.7 3773.4 0 2 11 4 22 44

98115 14/03/2011 11/05/2011 58 60 164.5 1495.6 1 2 4 6 17 30

98134 17/03/2011 1/04/2011 16 59 912.4 1316.7 1 11 13 4 12 18

98135 6/04/2011 14/09/2011 162 375 3227.3 8815.7 6 21 22 22 108 196

98141 14/06/2011 5/07/2011 21 11 83.8 467.0 0 0 0 1 1 9

Totals

390 801 9,606 20,621 122 292 283 110 203 240


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Figure 1. Deployment locations for the nine blue whales that were satellite-tagged between the

11th March and the 6th April 2011.


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Figure 2. Survival curves for the six latest tagging campaigns conducted by the AMMC research

group. A survival curve relating to a group of tags deployed early in tag development (pre 2008)

is also shown.

.


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a)

b)

Figure 3. Summary of tag performance: a) number of locations per day; and b) number of

locations per day for each PTT.

Number of locations

Pro

po

rtio

n

0 5 10 15

0.0

00

.05

0.1

00

.15

0.2

00

.25

0.3

0

53

330

53

734

53

791

98

106

98

108

98

115

98

134

98

135

98

141

0

5

10

15

Tag number

Lo

catio

ns


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Figure 4. The complete tracks obtained from the nine satellite-tagged pygmy blue whales.

AUSTRALIA

PERTH

DERBY

KALBARRI

GERALDTON

CARNARVON

PORT HEDLAND

140°E

140°E

130°E

130°E

120°E

120°E

110°E

110°E

100°E

100°E

10°S 10°S

20°S 20°S

30°S 30°S

SATELLITE TRACKING OF WESTERN AUSTRALIAN BLUE WHALES

PROJECTION: Azithumal EquidistantTrue Scale at 25

oS

Central Meridian at 130oE © Australian Antarctic D ivision

Adult Blue Whales tagged during their northbound migration in the months of March and April 2011.

This research was conducted by the Australian Marine Mammal Centre of the Australian Antarctic Division (DEWHA) in collaboration with the Western Australian Marine Science Institute (WAMSI), Woodside Energy Ltd., and the Centre for Whale Research (WA) Inc.

Woodside Energy Ltd. provided funds to WAMSI to support this project.

0 500250Kilometers

PTT Numbers

53330

53734

53791

98106

98108

98115

98134

98135

98141


Page 17

Figure 5. The tracks obtained off Western Australia from the nine satellite-tagged pygmy blue whales.

WESTERN AUSTRALIA

PERTH

KALBARRI

GERALDTON

CARNARVON

Exmouth

Perth Canyon

North West Cape

Naturaliste Plateau

120°E

120°E

110°E

110°E

30°S 30°S



oS

Central Meridian at 130oE © Austra lian Antarctic D ivision




PTT Numbers

53330

53734

53791

98106

98108

98115

98134

98135

98141


Page 18

Figure 6. The tracks obtained off northern Western Australia from the nine satellite-tagged pygmy blue whales.

AUSTRALIA

DERBY

PORT HEDLAND

Broome

Exmouth

Karratha

Scott Reef

Pender Bay

Camden Sound

North West Cape

James Price Point

130°E

130°E

120°E

120°E

110°E

110°E

10°S 10°S

20°S 20°S



oS

Central Meridian at 130oE © Austra lian Antarctic D iv ision




PTT Numbers

53330

53734

53791

98106

98108

98115

98134

98135

98141


Page 19

a)

b)

Figure 7. Linear distance from the tagging location for a) the first 50 days post deployment and

b) throughout the full transmission period against the number of days since the tag was

deployed.

0 10 20 30 40 50

050

010

00

15

00

20

00

2500

3000

35

00

Days since tagged

Dis

tan

ce fro

m tag

ge

d locatio

n (km

)

0 50 100 150

05

00

10

00

15

00

20

00

25

00

30

00

35

00

Days since tagged

Dis

tan

ce

fro

m ta

gg

ed

lo

ca

tio

n (

km

)


Page 20

Figure 8. Distance between the locations provided by the nine satellite-tagged pygmy blue

whales and the coastline of Western Australia. Data are categorised relative to their linear (great

circle) distance from an approximate single tagging location (-32.00 S, 114.97 E). Indicative

geographic locations are provided above the graph (cf. Figure 8). The box plot displays the

median, the 10th, 90th (whiskers) and the 25th and 75th percentiles (box).


Page 21

Figure 9. The sea depth at the locations provided by the nine satellite tags that provided more

than one reliable location. Data are categorised relative to their linear (great circle) distance

from an approximate single tagging location (-32.00 S, 114.97 E). Negative distances are those to

the South of the tagging location. The box plot displays the median, the 10th, 90th (whiskers)

and the 25th and 75th percentiles (box).

-300 0 300 600 900 1200 1650 2100 2550

-10

00

0-8

000

-60

00

-40

00

-20

00

0

Distance from tagging location (km)

De

pth

(m

etr

es)

Pert

h

Ca

rna

rvo

n

Exm

ou

th


Page 22

Figure 10. Graph showing the linear (great circle) distance traveled in a 24-hour period by the

nine tagged whales that provided more that one reliable location. Data are categorized relative

to their linear (great circle) distance from an approximate single tagging location (-32.00

S,114.97 E). Indicative geographic locations are provided above the graph (cf. Figure 8). The box

plot displays the median, the 10th, 90th (whiskers) and the 25th and 75th percentiles (box) if

sufficient data are available.

-300 0 300 600 900 1200 1650 2100 2550

05

01

00

150

Linear distance from tagging location (km)

Lin

ear

dis

tance

tra

ve

lle

d in

24

ho

urs

(km

)

Pe

rth

Ca

rna

rvo

n

Exm

ou

th


Page 23

Figure 11. Cumulative occupancy times of the nine satellite-tagged whales determined by interpolating the whale tracks to daily points. The density

is determined using a Kernel Density Smoother with 2 degree sampling radius. Note that although the unit is in cumulative days this is a relative

rather than absolute measure of occupancy. Due to the generally short longevity of most tags these data are biased by the deployment location.

AUSTRALIA

140°E

140°E

130°E

130°E

120°E

120°E

110°E

110°E

100°E

100°E

10°S 10°S

20°S 20°S

30°S 30°S


PROJECTION: Azithumal EquidistantTrue Scale at 25oSCentral Meridian at 130oE © Australian Antarctic D ivision




0 500250Kilometers

Occupation Duration

Cumulative Days

0 - 1.50

1.50 - 3.00

3.00 - 4.50

4.50 - 6.00

6.00 - 7.50

7.50 - 9.00

9.00 - 10.50

10.50 - 12

12 - 13.50

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