ScienceDaily (Oct. 11, 2012) —
Returning briefly to the surface for great lungfuls of air, the underwater
lifestyles of whales had been a complete mystery until a small group of
pioneers from various global institutions – including Malene Simon, Mark
Johnson and Peter Madsen – began attaching data-logging tags to these enigmatic
creatures.
Knowing that Jeremy Goldbogen and
colleagues had successful tagged blue, fin and humpback whales to reveal how
they lunge through giant shoals of krill, Simon and her colleagues headed off
to Greenland where they tagged five humpback whales to discover how the animals
capture and consume their prey: krill and agile capelin. Attaching individual
tags behind the dorsal fin on three of the whales – to record their stroke
patterns – and nearer the head in the remaining whales – to better measure head
movements – the team successfully recorded high resolution depth, acceleration
and magnetic orientation data from 479 dives to find out more about the
animals' lunge tactics. Simon, from the Greenland Institute of Natural
Resources, Madsen, from Aarhus University, Denmark and Johnsen from the
University of St. Andrews, UK, report how whales choreograph their foraging
lunges at depth in The Journal of Experimental Biology at http://jeb.biologists.org.
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