Satellite tagging of whale sharks ( Rhincodon typus) has typically focused on juvenile males which dominate coastal aggregation sites, with limited data on the movements of females. We satellite-tagged 39 whale sharks of 3.75–9.27 m total length at Ningaloo reef between 2015 and 2018 with a roughly equivalent sex ratio (Male = 20, Female = 18, Unknown = 1).We aimed to identify differences in horizontal and vertical movements b...

The analysis of how biological shape changes across ontogeny can provide us with valuable information on how species adapt behaviorally, physiologically, and ecologically. The white shark Carcharodon carcharias is one of the largest and most widely distributed apex predators globally, yet an understanding of ontogenetic changes in body shape and relative scaling of length and weight measures is limited, especially in relation...

By March 2020 coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was anticipated to present a major challenge to the work undertaken by scientists. This pandemic could be considered just one of the shocks that human society has had and will be likely to confront again in the future. As strategic thinking about the future can assist performance and planning of scientific research in the face of change, the pandemic presented an opportunity to...

Ocean and climate drivers affect the distribution and abundance of marine life on a global scale. Marine ecological forecasting seeks to predict how living marine resources respond to physical variability and change, enabling proactive decision‐making to support climate adaptation. However, the skill of ecological forecasts is constrained by the skill of underlying models of both ocean state and species‐environment relationshi...

The speartooth shark Glyphis glyphis is a Critically Endangered whaler shark known from a few tropical river systems in northern Australia and Papua New Guinea. There is limited genetic exchange in populations residing in northern Australian rivers that are greater than 100 km apart. In Queensland, the species is only found in the Wenlock and Ducie River that flow into Port Musgrave. Juveniles are confined to upstream reaches...

Ecological systems can often be characterised by changes among a finite set of underlying states pertaining to individuals, populations, communities or entire ecosystems through time. Owing to the inherent difficulty of empirical field studies, ecological state dynamics operating at any level of this hierarchy can often be unobservable or ‘hidden’. Ecologists must therefore often contend with incomplete or indirect observation...

The behavior of colony‐based marine predators is the focus of much research globally. Large telemetry and tracking data sets have been collected for this group of animals, and are accompanied by many empirical studies that seek to segment tracks in some useful way, as well as theoretical studies of optimal foraging strategies. However, relatively few studies have detailed statistical methods for inferring behaviors in central...

Bigeye tuna are known for remarkable daytime vertical migrations between deep water, where food is abundant but the water is cold, and the surface, where water is warm but food is relatively scarce. Here we investigate if these dive patterns can be explained by dynamic optimal foraging theory, where the tuna maximizes its energy harvest rate. We assume that foraging efficiency increases with body temperature, so that the verti...

Foraging theory predicts that mobile predators should target high profitability areas with plentiful resources and minimize time spent moving between these areas. This has led to a focus in recent literature on the identification of “hotspots” important for migratory marine predators, i.e., regions where predators spend disproportionate amounts of time ostensibly due to high prey abundance; and determination of the environment...

Recent studies have applied state–space models to satellite telemetry data in order to remove noise from raw location estimates and infer the true tracks of animals. However, while the resulting tracks may appear plausible, it is difficult to determine the accuracy of the estimated positions, especially for position estimates interpolated to times between satellite locations. In this study, we use data from two gray seals ( Ha...

Pop‐up satellite archival tags (PSATs) were deployed on 52 large (156–200 cm length to caudal fork) southern bluefin tuna ( Thunnus maccoyii ) in the western Tasman Sea during the austral winters of 2001–2005. Southern bluefin tuna (SBT) were resident in the Tasman Sea for up to 6 months with movements away from the tagging area occurring at highly variable rates. The data indicated a general tendency for SBT to move south fro...