Journal
GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY
Volume 23, Issue 6, Pages 2206-2217Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/gcb.13564
Keywords
Beaufort Sea; Bering Sea; cetacean; Chukchi Sea; climate change; foraging ecology; marine mammal; passive acoustics; phenology; satellite telemetry
Funding
- Alaska Beluga Whale Committee
- North Slope Borough and School District of Alaska
- National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)
- Alaska Department of Fish and Game
- National Fish and Wildlife Foundation
- Minerals Management Service
- Village of Point Lay
- Inuvialuit Hunter and Trapper Committee of Inuvik
- Inuvialuit Hunter and Trapper Committee of Aklavik
- Inuvialuit Hunter and Trapper Committee of Tuktoyaktuk
- Polar Continental Shelf Project
- Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO)
- Fisheries Joint Management Committee
- Environmental Studies Revolving Fund
- NMFS
- National Ocean Partnership Program [N00014-08-1-0311]
- National Science Foundation [ARC-0855282, ARC-1107106]
- NASA Climate Indicators Program Grant [NNX13AN28G]
- University of Washington's (UW) Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program on Ocean Change (National Science Foundation)
- UW School of Aquatic & Fishery Sciences
- NASA [NNX13AN28G, 469330] Funding Source: Federal RePORTER
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Migrations are often influenced by seasonal environmental gradients that are increasingly being altered by climate change. The consequences of rapid changes in Arctic sea ice have the potential to affect migrations of a number of marine species whose timing is temporally matched to seasonal sea ice cover. This topic has not been investigated for Pacific Arctic beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas) that follow matrilineally maintained autumn migrations in the waters around Alaska and Russia. For the sympatric Eastern Chukchi Sea ('Chukchi') and Eastern Beaufort Sea ('Beaufort') beluga populations, we examined changes in autumn migration timing as related to delayed regional sea ice freeze-up since the 1990s, using two independent data sources (satellite telemetry data and passive acoustics) for both populations. We compared dates of migration between 'early' (1993-2002) and 'late' (2004-2012) tagging periods. During the late tagging period, Chukchi belugas had significantly delayed migrations (by 2 to >4 weeks, depending on location) from the Beaufort and Chukchi seas. Spatial analyses also revealed that departure from Beaufort Sea foraging regions by Chukchi whales was postponed in the late period. Chukchi beluga autumn migration timing occurred significantly later as regional sea ice freeze-up timing became later in the Beaufort, Chukchi, and Bering seas. In contrast, Beaufort belugas did not shift migration timing between periods, nor was migration timing related to freeze-up timing, other than for southward migration at the Bering Strait. Passive acoustic data from 2008 to 2014 provided independent and supplementary support for delayed migration from the Beaufort Sea (4 day yr(-1)) by Chukchi belugas. Here, we report the first phenological study examining beluga whale migrations within the context of their rapidly transforming Pacific Arctic ecosystem, suggesting flexible responses that may enable their persistence yet also complicate predictions of how belugas may fare in the future.
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