Blue whale ecology in the South Taranaki Bight region of New Zealand February 2017 Field Report 30 April 2017 Report prepared by: Dawn Barlow, MSc student Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Marine Mammal Institute Oregon State University, Hatfield Marine Science Center 2030 SE Marine Science Drive Newport, OR 97365, U.S.A.
[email protected] Webpage: http://mmi.oregonstate.edu/dawn-barlow Dr. Leigh Torres, PI Assistant Professor; Oregon Sea Grant Extension agent Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Marine Mammal Institute Oregon State University, Hatfield Marine Science Center 2030 SE Marine Science Drive Newport, OR 97365, U.S.A. +1-541-867-0895;
[email protected] Webpage: http://mmi.oregonstate.edu/gemm-lab Lab blog: http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/gemmlab/ Collaborators: Holger Klinck (Co-PI)1, Kristin Hodge1, Todd Chandler2, Mike Ogle3, Callum Lilley3, C. Scott Baker2, Debbie Steel2, Brittany Graham4, Sarah Bury4, Philip Sutton4, Rochelle Constantine5, Kim Bernard6 1 Bioacoustics Research Program, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University 2 Oregon State University, Marine Mammal Institute 3New Zealand Department of Conservation (DOC) 4 National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, Ltd. (NIWA) 5 University of Auckland, School of Biological Sciences 6Oregon State University, College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences Research program supported by: The Aotearoa Foundation, The New Zealand Department of Conservation, The Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University, Greenpeace New Zealand, OceanCare, Kiwis Against Seabed Mining, The International Fund for Animal Welfare, and The Thorpe Foundation. Executive Summary In 2013, New Zealand’s South Taranaki Bight (STB) region was hypothesized to be a foraging ground for blue whales, overlapping with New Zealand’s most industrially active marine region with oil and gas extraction and survey effort, shipping traffic, fishing effort, and a proposed seabed mine.