The Hawaiian monk seal is a phocid Carnivore endemic to the Hawaiian Archipelago. This species was thought to be silent under water until the recent discovery that mature males produce at least six distinct calls year round, typically in bouts of two or more, with sound production linked to reproductive status. Here, we apply a progressive deep‐learning approach for acoustic monitoring of this endangered marine mammal, based o...

Reliable extraction of dolphin whistle contours is fundamental for scalable analyses of vocal identity, repertoire structure, and individual‐based acoustic monitoring. We evaluated four algorithms for fundamental frequency estimation of common bottlenose dolphin ( Tursiops truncatus ) whistles, leveraging a benchmark dataset of annotated whistles from known animals to assess performance across individuals and as a function of...

The South American fur seal ( Arctocephalus australis ) breeds in dense colonies along the Peruvian coast, mostly within protected areas managed by the Servicio Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas por el Estado (SERNANP). To support responsible wildlife tourism near breeding sites, we evaluated the behavioral responses to controlled pedestrian approaches at Punta Coles, within the Reserva Nacional Sistema de Islas, Islotes...

Cetacean epibionts offer noninvasive insights into host health, physiology, and spatial ecology, yet quantitative assessments in wild populations remain scarce. Although vessel‐based observations may be limited by field of view and analyst input, unoccupied aerial vehicles (UAVs; drones) are increasingly used to monitor cetacean health indices, enhancing observational availability and reproducibility. However, the suitability...

North Pacific humpback whales are a celebrated conservation success, rebounding from extensive commercial whaling. Yet they remain vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, a multifaceted stressor that can exacerbate existing threats. During 2013–2016, a Northeast Pacific marine heatwave severely reduced forage availability in their feeding grounds, concurrent with diminished whale recruitment and increased mortality. We an...