Upside-down swimming behaviour of free-ranging narwhals

Springer Science and Business Media LLC - Tập 7 - Trang 1-10 - 2007
Rune Dietz1, Ari D Shapiro2, Mehdi Bakhtiari3, Jack Orr4, Peter L Tyack2, Pierre Richard4, Ida Grønborg Eskesen1, Greg Marshall3
1Department of Arctic Environment, National Environmental Research Institute, University of Aarhus, Roskilde, Denmark
2Biology Department, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, USA
3National Geographic Remote Imaging, Washington, USA
4Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Central and Arctic Region, Arctic Research Division, Winnipeg, Canada

Tóm tắt

Free-ranging narwhals (Monodon monoceros) were instrumented in Admiralty Inlet, Canada with both satellite tags to study migration and stock separation and short-term, high-resolution digital archival tags to explore diving and feeding behaviour. Three narwhals were equipped with an underwater camera pod (Crittercam), another individual was equipped with a digital archival tag (DTAG), and a fifth with both units during August 2003 and 2004. Crittercam footage indicated that of the combined 286 minutes of recordings, 12% of the time was spent along the bottom. When the bottom was visible in the camera footage, the narwhals were oriented upside-down 80% of the time (range: 61100%). The DTAG data (14.6 hours of recordings) revealed that during time spent below the surface, the two tagged narwhals were supine an average of 13% (range: 9–18%) of the time. Roughly 70% of this time spent in a supine posture occurred during the descent. Possible reasons for this upside-down swimming behaviour are discussed. No preference for a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction of roll was observed, discounting the possibility that rolling movements contribute to the asymmetric left-handed helical turns of the tusk.

Tài liệu tham khảo

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