Interchange of humpback whales in Oceania (South Pacific), 1999-2004
2006. Interchange of humpback whales in Oceania (South Pacific), 1999-2004. Pages 1-8. In South Pacific Whale Research Consortium, Garrigue C, Baker CS, Constantine R, Poole M, Hauser N, Clapham P, Donoghue M, Russell K, Paton D, Mattila D: Inter-sessional workshop for the comprehensive assessment of Southern Hemisphere humpback whales, Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission. Hobart, Tasmania. 3-7 April 2006
The movement of individual humpback whales between wintering grounds of Oceania (South Pacific) was documented by individual identification photographs collected from 1999-2004. Photographs were collected with comparable effort across the six years in four primary island breeding grounds: New Caldonia, Tonga (Vava'u), the Cook Islands and French Polynesia (Mo'orea and Rurutu) and with a smaller effort in a few adjacent regions: Vanuatu, Fiji, Samoa, Niue and American Samoa. Catalogues from all regions were compared during annual meetings of the South Pacific Whale Research Consortiums. Across the 6 years, regional catalogues of fluke photographs representing 1148 annual sightings of 1021 individual whales from Oceania were compared to describe interchange among wintering grounds. Most resightings occurred within regions. Eighty two resights were found inside areas and only 23 individuals were sighted in two regions (mostly adjacent regions) and no individual was sighted in more than two regions. The documented movement between regions was one directional except for one individual sighted first in French Polynesia, then in American Samoa and then back in French Polynesia. Only one whale was resighted in more than one region during the same winter season (although a second was resighted in two subregions of Tonga). No directional trend was apparent and movement between regions did not seem to be sex specific.