Synchronous seasonal change in fin whale song in the North Pacific

PLoS One. 2014 Dec 18;9(12):e115678. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0115678. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

Fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus) song consists of down-swept pulses arranged into stereotypic sequences that can be characterized according to the interval between successive pulses. As in blue (B. musculus) and humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae), these song sequences may be geographically distinct and may correlate with population boundaries in some regions. We measured inter-pulse intervals of fin whale songs within year-round acoustic datasets collected between 2000 and 2006 in three regions of the eastern North Pacific: Southern California, the Bering Sea, and Hawaii. A distinctive song type that was recorded in all three regions is characterized by singlet and doublet inter-pulse intervals that increase seasonally, then annually reset to the same shorter intervals at the beginning of each season. This song type was recorded in the Bering Sea and off Southern California from September through May and off Hawaii from December through April, with the song interval generally synchronized across all monitoring locations. The broad geographic and seasonal occurrence of this particular fin whale song type may represent a single population broadly distributed throughout the eastern Pacific with no clear seasonal migratory pattern. Previous studies attempting to infer population structure of fin whales in the North Pacific using synchronous individual song samples have been unsuccessful, likely because they did not account for the seasonal lengthening in song intervals observed here.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Fin Whale / physiology*
  • Pacific Ocean
  • Seasons*
  • Vocalization, Animal*

Grants and funding

The Ecosystem and Oceanography and Protected Species Divisions at NOAA Fisheries Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center supported deployment of HARPs at Cross Seamount and provided salary support for E. Oleson and A. Bayless during a portion of this work. The Alaska Department of Fish and Wildlife provided funds for the deployment and maintenance of HARPs in the Bering Sea. United States Navy Chief of Naval Operations Environmental Compliance (CNO-N45) and the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) provided funds for deployment and maintenance of ARPs and HARPs off Hawaii Island and in the Southern California Bight. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.