Female whale shark with satellite transmitter for record-breaking four years shows consistent migrations

Amazing stuff!

"A team of researchers at the University of Rhode Island and Nova Southeastern University in Florida have been tracking a 26-foot endangered whale shark—named "Rio Lady"—with a satellite transmitter for more than four years—a record for whale sharks and one of the longest tracking endeavors for any species of shark. ...
Whale sharks, which live from 80 to 130 years, are the world's largest fish and third largest creature in the ocean—behind blue and fin whales. ...
Annually, they need to travel about 5,000 miles to find enough food to survive."

From the abstract:

"Context

Satellite telemetry has revolutionised the study of animal movement, particularly for mobile marine animals, whose movements and habitat make consistent, long-term observation difficult.

Aims

Summarise the movements of Rio Lady, a mature female whale shark (Rhincodon typus), to characterise these movements, and to predict expected behaviour throughout the Gulf of Mexico (GOM).

Methods

Rio Lady was tracked using satellite telemetry for over 1600 days, generating over 1400 locations and travelling over 40,000 km. State–space and move persistence modelling enabled characterisation of behaviour, and machine learning (ML) enabled the development of habitat-suitability models to predict habitat utilisation, on the basis of location transmissions and their environmental covariates.

Key results

Rio Lady exhibited annually consistent patterns of movements among three regions within the GOM. Final ML models produced seasonally dynamic predictions of habitat use throughout the GOM.

Conclusions

The application of these methods to long-term location data exemplifies how long-term movement patterns and core areas can be discovered and predicted for marine animals.

Implications

Despite our limited dataset, our integrative approach advances methods to summarise and predict behaviour of mobile species and improve understanding of their ecology."

Female whale shark with satellite transmitter for record-breaking four years shows consistent migrations

Tracking 4 years in the life of a female whale shark shows consistent migrations in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean (no public access)