Relation between beluga whale aggregations and sea temperature on climate change forecasts

Abstract

Climate change has been shown to alter the spatial distribution of whales and other marine mammals. Fast changing ocean temperatures may also affect the spatial distribution of whales at a finer scale, namely within populations, including aggregation behaviour. Our ability to analyze the impact of climate change on whale aggregation behavior, however, has been limited by our ability to collect spatial observation data over large areas. To overcome this limitation, this study analyzed open-access satellite imagery obtained between 2007 and 2020 in Canada, Russia, and Alaska using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) to detect 1,980 beluga whales in 11 populations and to quantify their aggregation patterns within their populations. Subsequently, we examined the relationship between sea surface temperature (SST) and the intra-population spatial patterns of beluga whales during summer seasons, when these whales normally aggregate. We detected a negative correlation between SST and the frequency of beluga whale aggregation, suggesting that warming temperatures may impact beluga whale spatio-behavioral dynamics. Considering that the relative abundance of beluga whales is declining and the future SST projections in these Arctic Ocean locations, climate change may pose yet another threat to beluga whales and other ice-dependent species.