Bowhead whales likely reproduce beneath the sea ice northwest of Spitsbergen, while using the open water in the eastern Fram Strait as a migration corridor.
Bowhead whales likely reproduce beneath the sea ice northwest of Spitsbergen, while using the open water in the eastern Fram Strait as a migration corridor. This conclusion comes from researchers in the Ocean Acoustics Group at the Alfred Wegener Institute, who recorded the calls of bowhead whales using underwater recorders and analysed the records with artificial intelligence. Their study on bowhead whale habitat use in relation to sea-ice cover has now been published in the journal Scientific Reports.
If bowhead whales produce particularly varied and diverse calls in one area, it is very likely that the area is a breeding ground. The species occurs exclusively in the Arctic Ocean and is therefore endemic to this region. Across the vast, partly ice-covered Arctic Ocean, researchers from the Ocean Acoustics Group at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) have installed hydrophones that can continuously record underwater sounds. This allows them to document calls of soniferous species in remote regions without being on site and to draw conclusions about the animal’s occurrence and behaviour based on the acoustic data.
Read more at: Alfred-Wegener-Institut
Photo Credit: Ocean Acoustics Group - AWI OZA
