[image title="Secondary Circulation" align="right" lightbox="true" width="200" autoHeight="true"]http://superpod.ml.duke.edu/johnston/files/2010/11/longeddy1.jpg[/image]
[dropcap4 color="green"]W[/dropcap4]e are currently involved in a number of projects that aim to link the foraging ecology and habitat needs of marine mammals with in situ and remotely sensed oceanographic phenomena.
Some of these projects employ a combination of physical (e.g. ADCP) and biological (e.g. EK-60 fisheries acoustics) oceanographic sampling to provide an ecological context for fine-scale (<10km) observations of the distribution, abundance and foraging behavior of marine predators.
Many of these projects leverage existing remote sensing and sightings datasets to explore the relationships amongst marine predators and both static and dynamic habitat features in a GIS framework. Several of these projects also employ novel ‘presence-only’ based techniques such as Maximum Entropy Modeling.
Examples of recently completed and ongoing projects:
- Foraging ecology of marine predators in island wake systems.
- Southern Ocean GLOBEC predators niche models (whales, seals and penguins)
- Hawaiian spinner dolphin resting habitats
- Niche overlaps of cetaceans and pinnipeds in coastal British Columbia
- Presence-only models of beaked whales in the North Pacific