Michael J. Moore's research while affiliated with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and other places
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Publications (172)
Background
To tag large marine vertebrates, without the need to catch them, avoiding using barbs for tag retention, and precisely controlling tag location, the remote Tag Attachment Device on a pole (TADpole) was developed. This allows single-pin tags (Finmount, Wildlife Computers) to be attached to the dorsal fins of free-swimming large marine ver...
Body size is key to many life-history processes, including reproduction. Across species, climate change and other stressors have caused reductions in the body size to which animals can grow, called asymptotic size, with consequences for demography. A reduction in mean asymptotic length was documented for critically endangered North Atlantic right w...
The sensory mechanisms used by baleen whales (Mysticeti) for locating ephemeral, dense prey patches in vast marine habitats are poorly understood. Baleen whales have a functional olfactory system with paired rather than single blowholes (nares), potentially enabling stereo-olfaction. Dimethyl sulfide (DMS) is an odorous gas emitted by phytoplankton...
Species ecology and life history patterns are often reflected in animal morphology. Blue whales are globally distributed, with distinct populations that feed in different productive coastal regions worldwide. Thus, they provide an opportunity to investigate how regional ecosystem characteristics may drive morphological differences within a species....
Toothed whales utilize specialized nasal structures such as the lipid-rich melon to produce sound and propagate it into the aquatic environment. Very little nasal morphology of mesoplodont beaked whales has been described in the literature, and the anatomy of the melon and associated musculature of Gervais' beaked whale (Mesoplodon europaeus) remai...
Quantifying the cumulative effects of stressors on individuals and populations can inform the development of effective management and conservation strategies. We developed a Bayesian state–space model to assess the effects of multiple stressors on individual survival and reproduction. In the model, stressor effects on vital rates are mediated by ch...
North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) risk extinction unless conservation measures not only reduce mortality but also enhance reproduction. Vessel collisions injure and kill by spinning propeller cuts or being hit with a blunt structure resulting in bone and soft tissue damage. Entanglement trauma includes sublethal injuries that can re...
Assessing cumulative effects of human activities on ecosystems is required by many jurisdictions, but current science cannot meet regulatory demands. Regulations define them as effect(s) of one human action combined with other actions. Here we argue for an approach that evaluates the cumulative risk of multiple stressors for protected wildlife popu...
Current estimates of marine mammal hydrodynamic forces tend to be made using camera-based kinematic data for a limited number of fluke strokes during a prescribed swimming task. In contrast, biologging tag data yields kinematic measurements from thousands of strokes, enabling new insights into swimming behavior and mechanics. However, there have be...
North Atlantic right whales (NARWs; Eubalaena glacialis) possess an arrangement of fine hairs on the rostrum and chin that may be used for hydrodynamic sensing during feeding. These hairs occur across mysticete species and are known to possess adequate innervation in the subdermal follicle to support their consideration as sensory hairs (vibrissae)...
Wildlife populations and their habitats are exposed to an expanding diversity and intensity of stressors caused by human activities, within the broader context of natural processes and increasing pressure from climate change. Estimating how these multiple stressors affect individuals, populations, and ecosystems is thus of growing importance. Howev...
Limited work to date has examined plastic ingestion in highly migratory seabirds like Great Shearwaters (Ardenna gravis) across their entire migratory range. We examined 217 Great Shearwaters obtained from 2008–2019 at multiple locations spanning their yearly migration cycle across the Northwest and South Atlantic to assess accumulation of ingested...
Whales are now largely protected from direct harvest, leading to partial recoveries in many previously depleted species.¹ However, most populations remain far below their historical abundances and incidental human impacts, especially vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear, are increasingly recognized as key threats.² In addition, climate-d...
Whaling has decimated North Atlantic right whales Eubalaena glacialis (NARW) since the 11th century and southern right whales E. australis (SRW) since the 19th century. Today, NARWs are Critically Endangered and decreasing, whereas SRWs are recovering. We review NARW health assessment literature, NARW Consortium databases, and efforts and limitatio...
Compared with terrestrial mammals, marine mammals possess increased muscle myoglobin concentrations (Mb concentration, g Mb · 100g−1 muscle), enhancing their onboard oxygen (O2) stores and their aerobic dive limit. Although myoglobin is not homogeneously distributed, cetacean muscle O2 stores have been often determined by measuring Mb concentration...
Decompression theory has been mainly based on studies on terrestrial mammals, and may not translate well to marine mammals. However, evidence that marine mammals experience gas bubbles during diving is growing, causing concern that these bubbles may cause gas emboli pathology (GEP) under unusual circumstances. Marine mammal management, and usual av...
Despite a long-documented history of severe harmful algal blooms (HABs) in New England coastal waters, corresponding HAB-associated marine mammal mortality events in this region are far less frequent or severe relative to other regions where HABs are common. This long-term survey of the HAB toxins saxitoxin (STX) and domoic acid (DA) demonstrates s...
Knowing size-at-age is important for determining food requirements and making inferences about the nutritional status of individuals and their populations. Accurate growth curves are also needed to quantify drug dosages to treat wounded or entangled animals. However, body sizes are often based on small numbers of measured animals that must be impro...
North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) feed and migrate in areas of the inshore and offshore trap fishery for American lobster (Homarus americanus) in the Northeast U.S. In addition to a recent increase in lethal and sub-lethal interactions with Canadian snow crab gear, entanglement in both Canadian and U.S. lobster trap gear threatens t...
Over 170,000 whales were killed in the sub-Antarctic waters of South Georgia (Islas Georgias del Sur, SG, South Atlantic) from 1904 to 1965. In recent decades, whales are regular summer visitors, with the southern right whale (Eubalaena australis) and humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliea) most commonly reported. A 23-day cetacean survey was condu...
Variably buoyant, dead Cetacea may float, or sink and later bloat to refloat if ambient temperature and pressure allow sufficient decomposition gas formation and expansion. Mortality can result from acute or chronic disease, fishery entanglement, vessel collision, noxious noises, or toxicant spills. Investigators often face the daunting task of elu...
Little is known about the dynamics of baleen whale respiratory cycles, especially the mechanics and activity of the blowholes and their interaction with seawater. In this study, the duration of complete respiration cycles (expiration/inhalation events) were quantified for the first time in two species: North Atlantic right whale (NARW) and humpback...
As species recover from exploitation, continued assessments of connectivity and population structure are warranted to provide information for conservation and management. This is particularly true in species with high dispersal capacity, such as migratory whales, where patterns of connectivity could change rapidly. Here we build on a previous long-...
Great whales have been detected using very‐high‐resolution satellite imagery, suggesting this technology could be used to monitor whales in remote areas. However, the application of this method to whale studies is at an early developmental stage and several technical factors need to be addressed, including capacity for species differentiation and t...
Assessment of the compressibility of marine mammal airways at depth is crucial to understanding vital physiologic processes such as gas exchange during diving. Very few studies have directly assessed changes in cetacean and pinniped trachea-bronchial shape, and none have quantified changes in volume with increasing pressure. A freshly deceased harb...
Body mass is a key life‐history trait in animals. Despite being the largest animals on the planet, no method currently exists to estimate body mass of free‐living whales.
We combined aerial photographs and historical catch records to estimate the body mass of free‐living right whales ( Eubalaena sp.). First, aerial photogrammetry from unmanned aeri...
The 2017 North Atlantic right whale (NARW) unusual mortality event and an increase in humpback whale entanglements off the U.S. West Coast have driven significant interest in ropeless trap/pot fishing. Removing the vertical buoy lines used to mark traps on the sea floor and haul them up would dramatically reduce or eliminate entanglements, the lead...
Whales are federally protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act; endangered species, such as the North Atlantic right whale, receive additional protection under the Endangered Species Act. However, their regulations have failed to satisfy conservation and animal welfare concerns. From 1990 to 2011 the North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacia...
Drag force acting on swimming marine mammals is difficult to measure directly. Researchers often use simple modeling and kinematic measurements from animals, or computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations to estimate drag. However, studies that compare these methods are lacking. Here, computational simulation and physical experiments were used t...
Southern right whale (Eubalaena australis) population structure can be viewed as a
migratory network of winter calving/socialising and summer feeding grounds. Here we investigate the position of the Chile-Peru wintering ground (n = 1) and the South
Georgia feeding ground (n = 15) in the broader migratory network, using mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and...
Abandoned, lost or discarded fishing gear (ALDFG) comprises a significant amount of global marine debris, with diverse impacts to marine environments, wildlife, and the fishing industry. Building evidence on ALDFG is critical to holistically understand the marine debris issue, and to inform the development of solutions that reduce amounts of ALDFG...
Instrumenting animals with tags contributes additional resistive forces (weight, buoyancy, lift, and drag) that may result in increased energetic costs; however, additional metabolic expense can be moderated by adjusting behavior to maintain power output. We sought to increase hydrodynamic drag for near-surface swimming bottlenose dolphins, to inve...
Chemical carcinogen biomarkers can validate public investment in environmental remediation. A major factor driving the clean-up of Boston Harbor, MA, USA, induced by the federal Clean Water Act legislation of 1972, was the high prevalence of petroleum and halogenated aromatic hydrocarbon contaminant-associated liver neoplasia in winter flounder Pse...
Bowhead and right whale (balaenid) baleen filtering plates, longer in
vertical dimension (≥3–4 m) than the closed mouth, presumably bend
during gape closure. This has not been observed in live whales, even
with scrutiny of video-recorded feeding sequences. To determine
what happens to the baleen during gape closure, we conducted an
integrative, mul...
Bio-logging technology is becoming an ever more common tool for persistent monitoring of people and animals in their natural environment. As a result, the volume and type of information collected by these embedded sensing systems continues to increase, making algorithms that can accurately and efficiently classify and parameterize behavior from sen...
Male baleen whales have long been suspected to have annual cycles in testosterone, but due to difficulty in collecting endocrine samples, little direct evidence exists to confirm this hypothesis. Potential influences of stress or adrenal stress hormones (cortisol, corticosterone) on male reproduction have also been difficult to study. Baleen has re...
Diving mammals have evolved a suite of physiological adaptations to manage respiratory gases during extended breath-hold dives. To test the hypothesis that offshore bottlenose dolphins have evolved physiological adaptations to improve their ability for extended deep dives and as protection for lung barotrauma, we investigated the lung function and...
North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) are highly endangered and frequently exposed to a myriad of human activities and stressors in their industrialized habitat. Entanglements in fixed fishing gear represent a particularly pervasive and often drawn-out source of anthropogenic morbidity and mortality to the species. To better understand...
Hydrostatic lung compression in diving marine mammals, with collapsing alveoli blocking gas exchange at depth, has been the main theoretical basis for limiting N2 uptake and avoiding gas emboli (GE) as they ascend. However, studies of beached and bycaught cetaceans and sea turtles imply that air-breathing marine vertebrates may, under unusual circu...
Recent studies have demonstrated that some hormones are present in baleen powder from bowhead (Balaena mysticetus) and North Atlantic right (Eubalaena glacialis) whales. To test the potential generalizability of this technique for studies of stress and reproduction in large whales, we sought to determine whether all major classes of steroid and thy...
The conservation and management of large whales rely in part upon health monitoring of individuals and populations, and methods generally necessitate invasive sampling. Here, we used a small, unmanned hexacopter drone to noninvasively fly above humpback whales from two populations, capture their exhaled breath (blow), and examine the associated mic...
Research into stress physiology of mysticete whales has been hampered by difficulty in obtaining repeated physiological samples from individuals over time. We investigated whether multi-year longitudinal records of glucocorticoids can be reconstructed from serial sampling along full-length baleen plates (representing ∼10 years of baleen growth), us...
Whale tracking tags often penetrate semi-rigid blubber, with intramuscular sharp tips and toggling barbs under the subdermal sheath to reduce premature shedding. Tag sites can show persistent regional swellings or depressions. Fibroelastic blubber grips a tag, so if muscle shears relative to blubber during locomotion, the tag tip could cavitate the...
Each year, many cetaceans die from accidental capture in fishing gear. Despite intense study in some species, we know little about levels of bycatch and entanglement in most of the world’s fisheries. Existing laws focus on maintenance of populations rather than welfare. Yet bycatch has wide-reaching welfare consequences, affecting quality of life f...
Little quantitative information on the behavior, health, and activity level of managed marine mammals is currently collected, though it has the potential to significantly contribute to management and welfare of these animals. To address this, high-resolution motion-sensing digital acoustic recording tags (DTAGs) collected data from animals under hu...
In this Review, we focus on the functional properties of the respiratory system of pinnipeds and cetaceans, and briefly summarize the underlying anatomy; in doing so, we provide an overview of what is currently known about their respiratory physiology and mechanics. While exposure to high pressure is a common challenge among breath-hold divers, the...
Bio-logging tags are an important tool for the study of cetaceans, but superficial tags inevitably increase hydrodynamic loading. Substantial forces can be generated by tags on fast-swimming animals, potentially affecting behavior and energetics or promoting early tag removal. Streamlined forms have been used to reduce loading, but these designs ca...
This supplemental file includes the experimental measurements and simulation data used to generate the normalized fluid pressure around the Model A design.
These data were used to create the difference map between the coefficients of pressure (Cpdiff) that was used to compare experimental and simulation results. The units for the velocity fields ar...
Simulation results for Model A tag housing design and the design derivatives over a range of flow velocities (V∞ = 1–6 m/s) are included in the supplemental data file.
Additionally, data from forces generated by the Model A design in constant 5.6 m/s off-axis flow (β = 0°–180°) are also provided.
(XLSX)
The challenge of identifying cause of death in discarded bycaught marine mammals stems from a combination of the non-specific nature of the lesions of drowning, the complex physiologic adaptations unique to breath-holding marine mammals, lack of case histories, and the diverse nature of fishing gear. While no pathognomonic lesions are recognized, s...
Individuals store energy to balance deficits in natural cycles; however, unnatural events can also lead to unbalanced energy budgets. Entanglement in fishing gear is one example of an unnatural but relatively common circumstance that imposes energetic demands of a similar order of magnitude and duration of life-history events such as migration and...
Large whales are frequently entangled in fishing gear and sometimes swim while carrying gear for days to years. Entangled whales are subject to additional drag forces requiring increased thrust power and energy expenditure over time. To classify entanglement cases and aid potential disentanglement efforts, it is useful to know how long an entangled...
© The Author(s), 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Frontiers in Marine Science 3 (2016): 137, doi:10.3389/fmars.2016.00137.
Reproduction of mysticete whales is difficult to monitor, and basic parameters, such as pregnancy rate and inter-calving interval,
remain unknown for many populations. We hypothesized that baleen plates (keratinous strips that grow downward from the palate
of mysticete whales) might record previous pregnancies, in the form of high-progesterone regi...
Author Posting. © Society for Marine Mammalogy, 2016. This article is posted here by permission of Society for Marine Mammalogy for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Marine Mammal Science 32 (2016):1510–1515, doi:10.1111/mms.12328.
Recent studies of stranded marine mammals indicate that exposure to underwater military sonar may induce pathophysiological responses consistent with decompression sickness (DCS). However, DCS has been difficult to diagnose in marine mammals. We investigated whether blood microparticles (MPs, measured as number/μl plasma), which increase in respons...
Lethal and sublethal fishing gear entanglement is pervasive in North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis). Entanglement can lead to direct injury and is likely to incur substantial energetic costs. This study (1) evaluates drag characteristics of entangled right whales, (2) contextualizes gear drag measurements for individual whales, and (3)...
The viability of healthy single stranded dolphins as immediate release candidates has received little attention. Responders have been reluctant to release lone delphinids due to their social needs, even when they pass the same health evaluations as mass stranded animals. This study tracked postrelease success of 34 relocated and released satellite...
Attaching bio-telemetry or -logging devices ('tags') to marine animals for research and monitoring adds drag to streamlined bodies, affecting posture, swimming gaits and energy balance. These costs have never been measured in free-swimming cetaceans. To examine the effect of drag from a tag on metabolic rate, cost of transport, and swimming behavio...
Northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris) (NES) are known to be deep, long-duration divers and to sustain long-repeated patterns of breath-hold, or apnea. Some phocid dives remain within the bounds of aerobic metabolism, accompanied by physiological responses inducing lung compression, bradycardia, and peripheral vasoconstriction. Current d...
Today there is enormous popular interest in marine mammals. Western media tend to dwell on the ongoing debate about commercial
whaling by Japan, Norway and Iceland. There is, however, relative silence as to how the shipping and fishing industries of
many if not all maritime countries are also catching and sometimes killing whales, albeit unintentio...
To determine effectiveness of Seasonal Management Areas (SMAs), introduced in 2008 on the US East Coast to reduce lethal vessel strikes to North Atlantic right whales, we analyzed observed large whale mortality events from 1990 – 2012 in the geographic region of the ‘Ship Strike Rule’ to identify changes in frequency, spatial distribution, and spat...
Microbes are now well regarded for their important role in mammalian health. The microbiology of skin - a unique interface between the host and environment - is a major research focus in human health and skin disorders, but is less explored in other mammals. Here, we report on a cross-population study of the skin-associated bacterial community of h...
Abstract Buoyancy is an important consideration for diving marine animals, resulting in specific ecologically relevant adaptations. Marine mammals use blubber as an energy reserve, but because this tissue is also positively buoyant, nutritional demands have the potential to cause considerable variation in buoyancy. North Atlantic right whales Eubal...
Protracted entanglement in fishing gear often leads to emaciation through reduced mobility and foraging ability, and energy budget depletion from the added drag of towing gear for months or years. We examined changes in kinematics of a tagged entangled North Atlantic right whale (Eg 3911), before, during, and after disentanglement on 15 January 201...
Gas bubbles in marine mammals entangled and drowned in gillnets have been previously described by computed tomography, gross examination and histopathology. The absence of bacteria or autolytic changes in the tissues of those animals suggested that the gas was produced peri- or post-mortem by a fast decompression, probably by quickly hauling animal...
In 1940, Scholander suggested that stiffened upper airways remained open and received air from highly compressible alveoli during marine mammal diving. There are little data available on the structural and functional adaptations of the marine mammal respiratory system. The aim of this research was to investigate the anatomical (gross) and structura...
From Kooyman's 1963 wind-up kitchen timer TDR, multi-sensor tags have evolved significantly over the last twenty years. These advancements, including high fidelity acoustics, have been driven by improved sensing and electronics technology, and resulted in highly integrated mechatronics systems for the study of free ranging animals. In the next deca...
The current paucity of published blood values and other clinically relevant data for short-beaked common dolphins, Delphinus delphis, hinders the ability of veterinarians and responders to make well-informed diagnoses and disposition decisions regarding live strandings of this species. This study examined hematologic, clinical chemistry, and physic...
Bio-logging tags are widely used to study the behavior and movements of marine mammals with the tacit assumption of little impact to the animal. However, tags on fast-swimming animals generate substantial hydrodynamic forces potentially affecting behavior and energetics adversely, or promoting early removal of the tag. In this work, hydrodynamic lo...
abstract : Euthanasia of stranded large whales poses logistic, safety, pharmaceutical, delivery, public relations, and disposal challenges. Reasonable arguments may be made for allowing a stranded whale to expire naturally. However, slow cardiovascular collapse from gravitational effects outside of neutral buoyancy, often combined with severely deb...
Post-mortem examination of dead and live stranded beach-cast pinnipeds and cetaceans for determination of a cause of death provides valuable information for the management, mitigation and prosecution of unintentional and sometimes malicious human impacts, such as vessel collision, fishing gear entanglement and gunshot. Delayed discovery, inaccessib...
A chronically entangled North Atlantic right whale, with consequent emaciation was sedated, disentangled to the extent possible, administered antibiotics, and satellite tag tracked for six subsequent days. It was found dead 11 d after the tag ceased transmission. Chronic constrictive deep rope lacerations and emaciation were found to be the proxima...
Elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris) are elite divers thought to exceed oxygen stores and thus initiate conversion to anaerobic pathways during a dive. One physiological adjustment accompanying deep, long dives is peripheral vasoconstriction consistent with tissue hypoxia in muscles associated with locomotion. Few data exists pertaining to fibe...
Large whales are subjected to a variety of conservation pressures that could be better monitored and managed if physiological information could be gathered readily from free-swimming whales. However, traditional approaches to studying physiology have been impractical for large whales, because there is no routine method for capture of the largest sp...
United States and Canadian governments have responded to legal requirements to reduce human-induced whale mortality via vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear by implementing a suite of regulatory actions. We analyzed the spatial and temporal patterns of mortality of large whales in the Northwest Atlantic (23.5°N to 48.0°N), 1970 through 2...
Body growth of North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) was described from measurements of knownage live and dead individuals to gain insights into the nutritional needs and life-history strategies of this endangered species. Body lengths from 154 individuals revealed that calves more than doubled in size and attained three-fourths of asym...
Concern over the well-being of marine mammals at sea has focused on intentional harvests, both in terms of individual welfare and population sustainability. Unintentional mortalities from fishing gear entanglement are primarily seen as a risk to population viability. Additionally, larger whales breaking free of, and subsequently carrying, fixed tra...
Recent dogma suggested that marine mammals are not at risk of decompression sickness due to a number of evolutionary adaptations. Several proposed adaptations exist. Lung compression and alveolar collapse that terminate gas-exchange before a depth is reached where supersaturation is significant and bradycardia with peripheral vasoconstriction affec...
Citations
... Other long-term trends in NARW health, body condition, and calving indicate significant challenges for the prospect of species recovery. Body lengths of NARWs have decreased since 1981 (Stewart et al., 2021), and smaller body sizes correspond with reduced NARW calving probability (Stewart et al., 2022;Pirotta et al., 2024). Observations of NARW body condition (Rolland et al., 2016;Pettis et al., 2017) and statistical models examining the cumulative effects of sub-lethal stressors on NARW health (Schick et al., 2013;Knowlton et al., 2022;Pirotta et al., 2023) all indicate long-term declines during the past 30+ years that are associated with increased calving intervals and decreased overall reproduction. ...
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... Body condition has also been linked to temporal changes within a foraging season (Lemos et al., 2020;Bierlich et al., 2022). Quantifying spatial patterns in the body condition of these sentinel species could improve our ability to understand variability in whale health and underlying ecosystem changes that are otherwise difficult to detect, and could inform wildlife management decisions (Bossart, 2011;Christiansen et al., 2020;Torres et al., 2022;Barlow et al., 2023). ...
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... These numbers together with those from US waters led the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to initiate an Unusual Mortality Event 1 in 2017, which remains open as of the date of this publication. In addition to high mortality, the species also contends with a number of sublethal threats that appear to be suppressing their reproductive potential (Stewart et al. 2022, Pirotta et al. 2023, T. Frasier et al. preprint doi:10.1101. These include the energetic consequences of prior acute injuries from non-lethal ship strikes or entanglement (Stewart et al. 2021), as well as any ongoing chronic entanglements (van der Hoop et al. 2017); chronic stress responses resulting from noise exposure (presumably in concert with all other stressors present; Rolland et al. 2012); and reduced prey availability and quality, likely as a consequence of climatic and oceanic changes (Record et al. 2019, Gavrilchuk et al. 2021, Meyer-Gutbrod et al. 2021, Pershing & Pendleton 2021. ...
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... Since 2010, shifts in habitat use have been seen, including increased use of SNE, Cape Cod Bay, and Gulf of St. Lawrence, and decreased use of Gulf of Maine and Scotian Shelf waters for summer feeding grounds (Meyer-Gutbrod et al., 2021. The remaining population of < 340 individual NARWs face lethal threats of entanglement in fishing gear and ship strike: it is unclear what effects offshore WEA may introduce to the species, but limiting cumulative stressors is essential if this species is to have a chance at survival (Pirotta et al., 2022(Pirotta et al., , 2023Moore, 2023 ;Pettis et al., 2023 ). With such a small population, and where breeding females make up less than half the population, any individuals impacted by increased vessel traffic, noise from construction and operation, or displacement of prey species, could have detrimental effects to NARW recovery (Pace et al., 2017 ;Christiansen et al., 2020 ;Reed et al., 2022 ). ...
... We believe that one reason why progress on understanding noise impacts has been slow is related to a too narrow focus since most investigators and regulators of aquatic noise tend to look at noise in isolation a) Email: frth@dhigroup.com from other potential stimuli. Instead, we argue here that investigators and regulators must see the "big picture" and learn from important concepts already applied in ecology (e.g., Tyack et al., 2022). ...
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... The metabolic cost (E) can be estimated via measured oxygen consumption, heart rate, and/or plasma lactate concentration during exercise (Williams et al., 1992(Williams et al., , 1993(Williams et al., , 2017Yazdi et al., 1999). In this work, we estimated E by combining estimated resting metabolic energy (E res ) with an estimate of the mechanical work (W ) produced by the animal during fluking, similarly to Gabaldon et al. (2022): ...
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... However, this escape strategy makes them available for large whales during day, which employ a variety of sensory mechanisms to locate and capture prey at depths where little light is available. For instance, in baleen whales, it has been suggested that rostral vibrissae or sensory tubercles function as mechanoreceptors during feeding, aiding in the detection of water or prey movements as well as the location of zooplankton patches [75][76][77] . Murphy et al. 77 further propose that right whales utilize their vibrissae to discern patch boundaries and evaluate densities within the patches, thereby optimizing their foraging efficiency and success. ...
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... Without knowledge of stressor-response relationshipshow the biological response changes with increasing levels of stress-we do not know if statistical interactions from a factorial experiment will accurately reflect the intrinsic stressor interactions outlined above. Expecting that the combined effects of stressors will be additivethe default of most multiple-stressor experimentsassumes that the biological response of interest will change linearly with increasing levels of stress (Pirotta et al., 2022;Schäfer & Piggott, 2018). If a stressor-response relationship is non-linear, however, even adding the same stressor twice would result in a non-additive combined effect (see Figure 2 in Schäfer et al., 2023). ...
... Plastics ingested by seabirds are collected either directly from their stomachs through dissection (e.g. Ryan, 1987;van Franeker et al., 2011;Robuck et al., 2022), or by inducing emesis (Bond and Lavers, 2013). Less invasive techniques include collecting regurgitated items at nests Phillips and Waluda, 2020) or take advantage of regurgitations of predators that include the indigestible remains of prey, including their ingested plastic (Furtado et al., 2016;Acampora et al., 2017;Diaz-Santibañez et al., 2023). ...
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... In addition to high mortality, the species also contends with a number of sublethal threats that appear to be suppressing their reproductive potential (Stewart et al. 2022, Pirotta et al. 2023, T. Frasier et al. preprint doi:10.1101. These include the energetic consequences of prior acute injuries from non-lethal ship strikes or entanglement (Stewart et al. 2021), as well as any ongoing chronic entanglements (van der Hoop et al. 2017); chronic stress responses resulting from noise exposure (presumably in concert with all other stressors present; Rolland et al. 2012); and reduced prey availability and quality, likely as a consequence of climatic and oceanic changes (Record et al. 2019, Gavrilchuk et al. 2021, Meyer-Gutbrod et al. 2021, Pershing & Pendleton 2021. The population has thus been declining and currently numbers an estimated 356 (+7/-10) individuals as of October 2023 (Pettis et al. 2023). ...
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