The Colombian Caribbean Sea: a tropical habitat for the Vulnerable sperm whale Physeter macrocephalus?
I SABE L CRI STIN A AVI LA,NOHE L I A F ARÍAS-CURTIDOR,LUISA CASTELLANOS-MORA KARINA BOHRE R D O AMARAL,DALIA C. B ARRAGÁN-BARRERA CAR L O S ANDRÉS OROZ C O ,JORGE L EÓ N and VLA DIMI R PUENTE S
Abstract We studied the sperm whale Physeter macro- cephalus in the Colombian Caribbean by combining data from our offshore surveys of behaviour, encounter rate, group structure and density with data from the literature. We describe for the first time the potential distribution of sperm whales in the Colombian Caribbean, using sighting and acoustic data obtained during our surveys, published information, and opportunistic encounters during 1988– 2020. We conducted surveys on seismic vessels over 703 days during 2011–2016, covering an area of 68,904 km2.We recorded 98 individuals in a total of 50 groups, a density of 1.42 individuals per 1,000 km2. To determine the potential distribution of the species, we built Maxent models with uncorrelated environmental variables at five depths (from the surface to c. 2,000 m). The model for 1,000m depth had the best performance, with areas of high probability of occurrence of sperm whales in the south and north-east Colombian Caribbean over the shelf break to waters up to c. 3,000m deep, at a median distance of 107 km from the coast, and near the Archipelago of San Andrés, Old Providence and Saint Catherine in the north-west. This area may be an important tropical habitat for sperm whales, in which they socialize, rest, breed and feed. Our study underlines the importance of monitoring marine mammals
ISABEL C. AVILA (Corresponding author,
orcid.org/0000-0003-1389-8908,
isabel_c_avila@yahoo.com) Grupo de Ecología Animal, Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia, and Institute for Terrestrial and Aquatic Wildlife Research, University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Foundation, Büsum, Germany
NOHELIA FARÍAS-CURTIDOR ( researcher, Bogotá, Colombia
KARINA BOHRER DO AMARAL (
orcid.org/0000-0002-5800-8887) Laboratório de Sistemática e Ecologia de Aves e Mamíferos Marinhos, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil
DALIA C. BARRAGÁN-BARRERA ( CARLOS ANDRÉS OROZCO (
orcid.org/0000-0003-4023-9908) Fundación
Macuáticos Colombia, Medellín, Colombia, and Centro de Investigaciones Oceanográficas e Hidrográficas del Caribe, Cartagena de Indias, Colombia
orcid.org/0000-0001-6711-7930) Independent
researcher, Archipelago of San Andrés, Old Providence and Saint Catherine, Colombia
JORGE LEÓN and VLADIMIR PUENTES (
orcid.org/0000-0002-8796-1810) Anadarko Colombia Company, Bogotá, Colombia
Received 7 April 2021. Revision requested 30 July 2021. Accepted 5 August 2021. First published online 20 April 2022.
orcid.org/0000-0002-2617-8988) Fundación
Macuáticos Colombia, Medellín, Colombia LUISA CASTELLANOS-MORA (
orcid.org/0000-0001-6247-7021) Independent
offshore and describes the potential distribution of sperm whales in the Colombian Caribbean, supporting conserva- tion actions for this Vulnerable species, which is currently facing several threats in this region.
Keywords Atlantic, Colombia, depth levels, environmental variables, Maxent model, Physeter macrocephalus, species distribution, sperm whale
Supplementary material for this article is available at
doi.org/10.1017/S0030605321001113
Introduction
commonly in offshore and deep waters (usually.1,000 m), concentrated in areas known as ‘grounds’ (Whitehead, 2003). The distribution of sperm whales is associated with areas of upwelling, temperature gradients, seafloor relief and with processes supporting food webs that include mesopelagic or demersal cephalopods, on which sperm whales feed (Baumgartner et al., 2001; Evans & Hindell, 2004). However, females with their young are usually restricted to temperate and tropical waters at low latitudes, where sea surface temperatures are .15 °C. Males leave their mothers at c. 10 years of age, moving to colder waters at higher latitudes, returning in their late 20s to the tropical and subtropical habitat of females, to mate (Whitehead, 2003;Whitehead et al., 2012). Sperm whales are categorized as Vulnerable on the IUCN
T
Red List (Taylor et al., 2019) and nationally in Colombia (Rodríguez-Mahecha et al., 2006), having been hunted for 2 centuries, until the 1990s, across all oceans (Whitehead, 2002). Although commercial hunting has ceased, sperm whales face threats from incidental catch, interactions with fishing gear, collisions with boats, and pollution (Avila et al., 2018). The global population trend of the species is unknown (Taylor et al., 2019), but the sperm whale population in the eastern Caribbean declined during 2005–2015 (Gero & Whitehead, 2016). The global offshore distribution of spermwhales and their habitat use are poorly known (Whitehead, 2003), and there have been few studies
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Oryx, 2022, 56(6), 814–824 © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605321001113
he sperm whale Physeter macrocephalus is a deep diving, top marine predator distributed worldwide,
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164
