Occurrence, population composition, and habitat use of humpback whales in Samana Bay, Dominican Republic

1994 ◽  
Vol 72 (11) ◽  
pp. 1898-1907 ◽  
Author(s):  
David K. Mattila ◽  
Phillip J. Clapham ◽  
Oswaldo Vásquez ◽  
Robert S. Bowman
Keyword(s):  
Dominican Republic ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Gulf Of Maine ◽  
Humpback Whales ◽  
Mammal Species ◽  
The West ◽  
The North ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Almost All

A study of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) was conducted between 1988 and 1991 in Samana Bay, Dominican Republic. Humpbacks were observed as early as the earliest survey (3 January) and as late as the latest (16 March). Local abundance varied from 0 whales per hour to a maximum of 3.2 whales per hour (mean = 1.70, SD = 0.79), and densities calculated from track surveys ranged from 0.09 to 0.82 whales per square nautical mile (mean = 0.31). Abundance generally peaked in February, but variation was observed both within a season and between years. Almost all whales were observed in the eastern part of the bay, towards or at its mouth. In all, 397 individuals were photographically identified during the study period. Of these, 18 were observed in more than 1 year (17 in 2 years, 1 in 3 years). A total of 15.8% of identified individuals were observed on more than 1 day in a year (maximum 5 days), with mothers representing 33.3% of all resightings. Observed occupancies of resighted animals ranged from 1 to 33 days (mean = 6.3 days, SD = 7.14). The mean group size was 1.95 (range = 1–15, SD = 1.30, n = 652 groups). Ninety-nine groups contained a calf, and all groups larger than three (n = 45) were competitive in nature. Comparisons of fluke photographs with the North Atlantic Humpback Whale Catalogue revealed 141 matches of 118 individuals to other areas. Of these, 76 were to high-latitude feeding grounds (including the Gulf of Maine, Newfoundland, Labrador, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and west Greenland), while the remaining 65 were to other areas of the West Indies (Silver Bank, Navidad Bank, Puerto Rico, Virgin Bank, or Anguilla Bank) or to Bermuda. We suggest that Samana Bay is one of the most important winter habitats in the West Indies for humpback whales from all over the western North Atlantic, although whaling records suggest that the abundance of whales in this area may be a relatively recent phenomenon. Sightings of other marine mammal species in Samana Bay are summarized.

Local and migratory movements of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) satellite-tracked in the North Atlantic Ocean

2014 ◽  
Vol 92 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.S. Kennedy ◽  
A.N. Zerbini ◽  
O.V. Vásquez ◽  
N. Gandilhon ◽  
P.J. Clapham ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Dominican Republic ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Gulf Of Maine ◽  
North Atlantic Ocean ◽  
Megaptera Novaeangliae ◽  
Humpback Whales ◽  
The North ◽  
Breeding Grounds ◽  
Multiple Feeding ◽  
Feeding Grounds

North Atlantic humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae (Borowski, 1781)) migrate from high-latitude summer feeding grounds to low-latitude winter breeding grounds along the Antillean Island chain. In the winters and springs of 2008 through 2012, satellite tags were deployed on humpback whales on Silver Bank (Dominican Republic) and in Guadeloupe (French West Indies) breeding areas. Whales were monitored, on average, for 26 days (range = 4–90 days). Some animals remained near their tagging location for multiple days before beginning their northerly migration, yet some visited habitats along the northwestern coast of the Dominican Republic, northern Haiti, the Turks and Caicos islands, and off Anguilla. Individuals monitored during migration headed towards feeding grounds in the Gulf of Maine (USA), Canada, and the eastern North Atlantic (Iceland or Norway). One individual traveled near Bermuda during the migration. This study provides the first detailed description of routes used by North Atlantic humpback whales towards multiple feeding destinations. Additionally, it corroborates previous research showing that individuals from multiple feeding grounds migrate to the Antilles for the breeding season. This study indicates that North Atlantic humpbacks use an area broader than the existing boundaries of marine mammal sanctuaries, which should provide justification for their expansion.

Regional and sexual differences in fluke pigmentation of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) from the North Atlantic Ocean

1994 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 274-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith M. Allen ◽  
Howard C. Rosenbaum ◽  
Steven K. Katona ◽  
Philip J. Clapham ◽  
David K. Mattila
Keyword(s):  
Dominican Republic ◽  
Atlantic Ocean ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Gulf Of Maine ◽  
North Atlantic Ocean ◽  
Humpback Whales ◽  
Winter Range ◽  
The North ◽  
Breeding Grounds ◽  
Summer Range

The relative amount of pigmentation on the flukes of 3812 humpback whales from five feeding and three breeding regions in the western North Atlantic Ocean was ranked subjectively into categories 1 (white) through 5 (black). The distribution of rankings was examined to determine whether differences existed between regions or sexes. Fluke pigmentation differed significantly among whales photographed in the five northern feeding regions (Iceland, southwestern Greenland, Newfoundland (including the Labrador coast), the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the Gulf of Maine). Whales photographed in the Gulf of Maine were characterized by a significantly higher proportion of dark-colored flukes than whales in all feeding regions except Iceland. Whales photographed near Greenland were characterized by significantly more light-colored flukes than other feeding regions. Fluke pigmentation also varied significantly among whales photographed in the three southern breeding regions (Virgin Bank, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic). The flukes of whales photographed near Virgin Bank differed from those of whales near the Dominican Republic and included a higher proportion of light flukes. Fluke pigmentation of males and females differed significantly in the Gulf of Maine and in the Dominican Republic. Both areas showed higher proportions of dark-fluked females and light-fluked males. Sex bias differences in other regions were not examined because sample sizes were small. Fluke pigmentation of whales photographed only on the summer range did not differ significantly from the pigmentation of those photographed only on the winter range, supporting the belief that all northern feeding aggregations mix on the southern breeding grounds. Regional differences in fluke pigmentation suggest that the western North Atlantic humpback whale population includes a number of relatively isolated subunits, as suggested previously by photoidentification and DNA studies.

Distribution and movements of West Indian humpback whales in winter

1982 ◽  
Vol 60 (9) ◽  
pp. 2203-2211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hal Whitehead ◽  
Michael J. Moore
Keyword(s):  
North Atlantic ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Movement Patterns ◽  
Humpback Whales ◽  
Significant Feature ◽  
The West ◽  
Flat Bottom ◽  
The North ◽  
Calm Water ◽  
The North Atlantic

The humpback whales which winter in the West Indies are principally found over banks which are at latitudes between 10° and 22° N, have substantial areas of flat bottom between 15 and 60 m deep, and lie less than 30 km from the North Atlantic 2000 m contour. The surface sea temperatures in these areas are between 24 and 28 °C. The major concentrations of the humpbacks, which feed little in winter, are on Silver and Navidad banks. On Silver Bank the humpback and humpback song densities peak in the centre of the Bank. Mothers with calves are generally found in areas of calm water, and singers are found over areas with a flat bottom, where they meander slowly. Larger groups move considerably faster and in straighter lines. There is no evidence of whales possessing particular movement patterns, preferred ranges, or territories within the Bank. The concentration of humpbacks may be a significant feature for other humpbacks.

Archaeology of Identity and Dissonance

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernice Kurchin
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
North Africa ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
Multiple Dimensions

In situations of displacement, disruption, and difference, humans adapt by actively creating, re-creating, and adjusting their identities using the material world. This book employs the discipline of historical archaeology to study this process as it occurs in new and challenging environments. The case studies furnish varied instances of people wresting control from others who wish to define them and of adaptive transformation by people who find themselves in new and strange worlds. The authors consider multiple aspects of identity, such as race, class, gender, and ethnicity, and look for ways to understand its fluid and intersecting nature. The book seeks to make the study of the past relevant to our globalized, postcolonized, and capitalized world. Questions of identity formation are critical in understanding the world today, in which boundaries are simultaneously breaking down and being built up, and humans are constantly adapting to the ever-changing milieu. This book tackles these questions not only in multiple dimensions of earthly space but also in a panorama of historical time. Moving from the ancient past to the unknowable future and through numerous temporal stops in between, the reader travels from New York to the Great Lakes, Britain to North Africa, and the North Atlantic to the West Indies.

Peasants and Danes: The Danish National Identity and Political Culture

1992 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uffe Østergård
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
West Indies ◽  
North Atlantic Ocean ◽  
Sociological Perspective ◽  
The West ◽  
Western Africa ◽  
The North ◽  
Rare Situation

From a cultural and historical-sociological perspective, the Danish nationstate of today represents a rare situation of virtual identity between state, nation, and society, which is a more recent phenomenon than normally assumed in Denmark and abroad. Though one of the oldest European monarchies, whose flag came ‘tumbling down from heaven in 1219’—ironically enough an event that happened in present-day Estonia—Denmark's present national identity is of recent vintage. Until 1814 the word, Denmark, denominated a typical European, plurinational or multinational, absolutist state, second only to such powers as France, Great Britain, Austria, Russia, and perhaps Prussia. The state had succeeded in reforming itself in a revolution from above in the late eighteenth century and ended as one of the few really “enlightened absolutisms” of the day (Horstbøll and østergård 1990; østergård 1990). It consisted of four main parts and several subsidiaries in the North Atlantic Ocean, plus some colonies in Western Africa, India, and the West Indies. The main parts were the kingdoms of Denmark proper and Norway, plus the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. How this particular state came about need not bother us here.

Validation of the replacement name Eusceliotes Stebbing, 1888 for the pelagic hyperiidean amphipod genus Euscelus Claus, 1879 (Crustacea: Amphipoda: Hyperiidea: Parascelidae), preoccupied by Euscelus Schoenherr, 1833 (Insecta: Coleoptera: Attelabidae)

Zootaxa ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 4254 (3) ◽  
pp. 377
Author(s):  
WOLFGANG ZEIDLER
Keyword(s):  
North Atlantic ◽  
West Indies ◽  
North Atlantic Ocean ◽  
Zoological Museum ◽  
Leaf Rolling ◽  
The West ◽  
The North ◽  
Large Genus ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
The Caribbean

The generic name Euscelus was originally proposed by Schoenherr (1833: 205) for a genus of Leaf Rolling weevils (Insecta: Coleoptera: Attelabidae). It is a valid name, in current use, for a relatively large genus of weevils, widespread in northern South America and central America, including the West Indies and the Caribbean (e.g. Hamilton 2007; Legalov 2007). Euscelus Claus, 1879 was established as a monotypic genus of pelagic amphipod (Crustacea: Amphipoda: Hyperiidea: Parascelidae). It is a very rare genus, still monotypic, with the only species, E. robustus Claus, 1879, having been recorded only twice in the literature prior to my review of the families and genera of the superfamily Platysceloidea (Zeidler 2016); initially by Claus (1879), from the Indian Ocean (off Zanzibar), and secondly by Spandl (1927), from the North Atlantic Ocean (off the Azores). Both authors only recorded males. While examining the collections of the Zoological Museum, University of Copenhagen (Zeidler 2016) more specimens of this rare species were located amongst the collections of the Dana expeditions of 1928–1930 (Jespersen & Tåning 1934), thus enabling a more complete description of the species including that of females. It was recently brought to my attention that, according to the data base Interim Register of Marine and Nonmarine Genera (Rees 2016), Euscelus Claus, 1879 is a junior homonym of Euscelus Schoenherr, 1833. While researching this problem I discovered that Stebbing (1888) had also become aware of this homonymy and had suggested the replacement name Eusceliotes. Unfortunately, Stebbing (1888) only refers to the name in his index (pp. 1672, 1699) and hence subsequent authors were unaware of the above homonymy and Stebbing’s replacement name, although it is listed by Neave (1939: 370). The purpose of this communication is to resolve the above homonymy by validating Stebbing’s (1888) replacement name. This action is preferred to proposing yet another new name for Euscelus Claus, 1879, in order to avoid further confusion, because Stebbing’s name, Eusceliotes, already exists in the literature (Stebbing 1888, Neave 1939). 

ORIGINS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN EPHEMEROPTERA FAUNA, ESPECIALLY THE LEPTOPHLEBIIDAE

1988 ◽  
Vol 120 (S144) ◽  
pp. 13-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
William L. Peters
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Transition Zone ◽  
Northern Hemisphere ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
North American ◽  
West Indies ◽  
The West ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic ◽  
Mexican Transition Zone

AbstractThe complex origins of the North American Ephemeroptera fauna extended from the Lower Permian to the Recent. This paper discusses origins of North American genera of the cosmopolitan family Leptophlebiidae with a few examples from other mayfly families. The two extant subfamilies, Leptophlebiinae and Atalophlebiinae, probably evolved at least by the mid-Cretaceous, or about 100 million years before present. The primitive Leptophlebiinae are distributed throughout most of the Northern Hemisphere and the ancestors of the Leptophlebia–Paraleptophlebia complex within this subfamily dispersed widely by the North Atlantic route as early as the mid-Cretaceous and later probably by northern trans-Pacific dispersals through Beringia. The ancestors of Habrophlebia dispersed through the North Atlantic route at an early time, but the vicariant distribution of Habrophlebiodes in several areas of the Oriental Region and eastern North America correlates with the Arcto-Tertiary forest that covered most of the Northern Hemisphere including Beringia from the Early Tertiary into the Pleistocene. Within the nearly cosmopolitan Atalophlebiinae, Traverella is austral in origin and probably dispersed north through the Mexican Transition Zone during the mid-Tertiary as an ancient dispersal and then dispersed to its northern and eastern limits following the last Pleistocene deglaciation by way of the Missouri River tributaries. Thraulodes and Farrodes are both austral in origin and probably dispersed north through the Mexican Transition Zone during the Early Pleistocene as a relatively recent dispersal. The origins of Choroterpes sensu stricto and Neochoroterpes in North America are unknown. The mayfly fauna of the West Indies is Neotropical in origins, and no affinities between the West Indies and North America through Florida have ever been confirmed.

High-latitude-area composition of humpback whale competitive groups in Samana Bay: further evidence for panmixis in the North Atlantic population

1993 ◽  
Vol 71 (5) ◽  
pp. 1065-1066 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phillip J. Clapham ◽  
David K. Mattila ◽  
Per J. Palsbøll
Keyword(s):  
North Atlantic ◽  
High Latitude ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Humpback Whales ◽  
Atlantic Population ◽  
The North ◽  
Skin Biopsies ◽  
The North Atlantic ◽  
Molecular Determination

Competitive groups of humpback whales, Megaptera novaeangliae, were observed in Samana Bay, Dominican Republic, West Indies. Photographs of ventral fluke patterns were used to identify individuals, and skin biopsies were taken for molecular determination of sex. Nine groups contained two or more whales previously identified from different high-latitude areas. In seven groups, males from different feeding grounds were observed to compete with each other, and in six cases the group's female was from a different area than at least one of her male escorts. These results provide further support for the hypothesis that the western North Atlantic population of this species can be considered a single panmictic unit.

Age at attainment of sexual maturity in humpback whales, Megaptera novaeangliae

1992 ◽  
Vol 70 (7) ◽  
pp. 1470-1472 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phillip J. Clapham
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
Sexual Maturity ◽  
Gulf Of Maine ◽  
Megaptera Novaeangliae ◽  
Humpback Whales ◽  
Annual Growth Rate ◽  
Growth Layer ◽  
The West ◽  
Similar Range ◽  
Layer Groups

Twelve female humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) in the southern Gulf of Maine produced first-observed calves at ages ranging from 5 to 7 years. These data confirm that most females of this species attain sexual maturity at an average age of approximately 5 years. Observations in the West Indies of two males, aged 6 and 7 years, engaged in breeding-related behavior that is characteristic of mature animals suggests that males attain sexual maturity within a similar range of ages to females, although they may not be able to successfully engage in intrasexual competition until later in life. These data imply that the examination of ear plugs to determine the age of dead humpback whales should be based upon an assumed annual growth rate of two growth layer groups, not one.

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