Floris M van Beest, Jonas Teilmann, Rune Dietz, Anders Galatius, Lonnie Mikkelsen, Dominique Stalder, Signe Sveegaard, Jacob Nabe-Nielsen
Quantifying intraspecific variation in movement behaviour of marine predators and the underlying environmental drivers is important to inform conservation management of protected species. Here, we provide the first empirical data on fine-scale movements of free-ranging harbour porpoises ( Phocoena phocoena ) in their natural habitat. Data were obtained from six individuals, tagged in two areas of the Danish North Sea, that were equipped with Global Positioning System (GPS) and dive recorder units (V-tags). We used multi-model inference and model averaging to evaluate the relative importance of various static and dynamic environmental conditions on the movement characteristics: speed, turning angle, dive duration, dive depth, dive wiggliness (a proxy for prey chasing behaviour), and post-dive duration...
2018: Marine Biology