Seasonal migrations of Sea of Okhotsk beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas) of the Sakhalin-Amur summer aggregation |
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| Authors: | O. V. Shpak R. D. Andrews D. M. Glazov D. I. Litovka R. C. Hobbs L. M. Mukhametov |
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| Affiliation: | (1) Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, c/o National Marine Mammal Laboratory, 7600 Sand Point Way NE Seattle, WA 98115, USA;(2) Freshwater Institute, Department of Fisheries and Oceans, 501 University Crescent, R3T 2N6 Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada;(3) Department of Arctic Environment, National Environmental Research Institute, Frederiksborgvej 399, Box 358, 4000 Roskilde, Denmark;(4) School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington, Box 355020, 98195 Seattle, Washington, USA;(5) Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, Box 570, 3900 Nuuk, Greenland |
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| Abstract: | Seasonal migrations of beluga whales from the Sakhalin-Amur aggregation in the Sea of Okhotsk were investigated with the use of satellite telemetry. Satellite tags were attached to four females captured near Chkalova Island, Sakhalin Bay, in August 2007. At 5 weeks after tagging, the belugas left the Chkalova Island area and moved to the Nikolaya and Ul’banskii Bays in the Shantar Sea. The animals stayed in these bays (mainly in Nikolaya Bay) until the end of autumn and then traveled northward to deeper waters. In winter and spring, they preferred to stay in the regions with dense ice cover or close to the ice edge. During the winter migration, the tagged whales, as a rule, did not keep together, although they followed the same course with a little time lag. The female whose tag transmitted the longest (9.5 months) returned to Chkalova Island in late May and thus completed the seasonal migration cycle. Based on the data on the migration routes of the tagged belugas, we suggest that the Sakhalin-Amur and Shantar aggregations interact in autumn. It is also possible that they have similar winter migratory paths |
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