can you find whales by measuring chlorophyll? Cilian Roden (1), Simon Berrow (1,2), Ian O’Connor (1), Pádraig Whooley (2)
(1) Galway Mayo Institute of Technology (2) Irish Whale and Dolphin Group cillian.roden@gmit.ie
Ecology is supposedly about integrating all aspects of the natural world, but too often it relapses into over specialisation. Here the links between phytoplankton ecology and cetacean studies are explored. In this short talk patterns of cetacean sightings are compared to patterns in chlorophyll distribution in three locations in Irish waters, the coastal waters of Connemara, the upwelling region along the south coast and the deep sea canyons west and north of the Porcupine Bank. A number of intriguing patterns are illustrated but the difficulty in linking the behaviour of some of the smallest and largest organisms in the marine food chain are not to be underestimated.