Search for: All records

Global climate is regulated by the ocean, which stores, releases, and transports large amounts of mass, heat, carbon, and oxygen. Understanding, monitoring, and predicting the exchanges of these quantities across the ocean’s surface, their interactions with the atmosphere, and their horizontal and vertical pathways through the global oceans, are key for advancing fundamental knowledge and improving forecasts and longer-term projections of climate, weather, and ocean ecosystems. The existing global observing system provides immense value for science and society in this regard by supplying the data essential for these advancements. The tropical ocean observing system in particular has been developed over decades, motivated in large part by the far-reaching and complex global impacts of tropical climate variability and change. However, changes in observing needs and priorities, new challenges associated with climate change, and advances in observing technologies demand periodic evaluations to ensure that stakeholders’ needs are met. Previous reviews and assessments of the tropical observing system have focused separately on individual basins and their associated observing needs. Here we provide a broader perspective covering the tropical observing system as a whole. Common gaps, needs, and recommendations are identified, and interbasin differences driven by socioeconomic disparities are discussed, building on the concept of an integrated pantropical observing system. Finally, recommendations for improved observations of tropical basin interactions, through oceanic and atmospheric pathways, are presented, emphasizing the benefits that can be achieved through closer interbasin coordination and international partnerships. 

Abstract Bioenergetic approaches are increasingly used to understand how marine mammal populations could be affected by a changing and disturbed aquatic environment. There remain considerable gaps in our knowledge of marine mammal bioenergetics, which hinder the application of bioenergetic studies to inform policy decisions. We conducted a priority-setting exercise to identify high-priority unanswered questions in marine mammal bioenergetics, with an emphasis on questions relevant to conservation and management. Electronic communication and a virtual workshop were used to solicit and collate potential research questions from the marine mammal bioenergetic community. From a final list of 39 questions, 11 were identified as ‘key’ questions because they received votes from at least 50% of survey participants. Key questions included those related to energy intake (prey landscapes, exposure to human activities) and expenditure (field metabolic rate, exposure to human activities, lactation, time-activity budgets), energy allocation priorities, metrics of body condition and relationships with survival and reproductive success and extrapolation of data from one species to another. Existing tools to address key questions include labelled water, animal-borne sensors, mark-resight data from long-term research programs, environmental DNA and unmanned vehicles. Further validation of existing approaches and development of new methodologies are needed to comprehensively address some key questions, particularly for cetaceans. The identification of these key questions can provide a guiding framework to set research priorities, which ultimately may yield more accurate information to inform policies and better conserve marine mammal populations. 

Abstract Surveillance of animal movements using electronic tags (i.e., biotelemetry) has emerged as an essential tool for both basic and applied ecological research and monitoring. Advances in animal tracking are occurring simultaneously with changes to technology, in an evolving global scientific culture that increasingly promotes data sharing and transparency. However, there is a risk that misuse of biotelemetry data could increase the vulnerability of animals to human disturbance or exploitation. For the most part, telemetry data security is not a danger to animals or their ecosystems, but for some high-risk cases, as with species’ with high economic value or at-risk populations, available knowledge of their movements may promote active disturbance or worse, potential poaching. We suggest that when designing animal tracking studies it is incumbent on scientists to consider the vulnerability of their study animals to risks arising from the implementation of the proposed program, and to take preventative measures.