PUBLIC LECTURE: Conservation of Highly Migratory Marine Species: The Need to Integrate Physiology, Behavior and Ecology

The conservation of upper trophic level marine vertebrates presents some unique challenges in that they can migrate over great distances, in some cases covering entire ocean basins. A critical component to their conservation is to assess their home range. However, this is only a first step, as information on the quality of the habitat is essential. Biologging methods provides us a window into the movement patterns of these animals, as well as their migratory and foraging behaviour. These behavioural observations can be coupled with measurements of the animal's oxygen stores and metabolic rates that can be used to estimate the animals aerobic dive limit. These studies show that there is a range of responses that correlate with the foraging ecology and phylogeny of diving mammals, where some foraging patterns require animals to more routinely push their physiological capability. These differences have conservation implications in those animals that push their physiological capability are likely to have a reduced ability to withstand environmental perturbations such as climate change. Finally, these data can be coupled with bioenergetics data and demographic models to better understand whether and how these interactions will affect population trajectories.