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High-Resolution Archival Tags Provide New Insights Into The Underwater Foraging And Echolocation Behavior Of Resident Killer Whales Capturing Pacific Salmon, Brianna Wright

Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference

Dtags contain sensors for recording both high resolution animal movement and underwater sound. They provide a valuable tool for examining the foraging behavior of resident killer whales, a specialist predator that relies on echolocation to find and pursue Pacific salmon, its primary prey. We deployed Dtags on 32 northern residents off Vancouver Island, BC, and compared reconstructed whale dive paths to distributions of different salmonid prey. Foraging whales dove deeper, remained submerged longer, swam faster, increased their dive path tortuosity, and rolled their bodies more than during other activities. Foraging dive structure also reflected the deeper vertical distribution of Chinook …