Most studies of pelagic predator distributions have focused on ocean conditions coincident in time and space with the animal (Eulerian, or state predictors), without consideration of the dynamic history of the water parcel selected by the predator (Lagrangian predictors). However, there is growing evidence that some marine organisms (including elephant seals, frigatebirds, penguins) may select for Lagrangian and not just Eulerian features. Lagrangian predictors can capture filaments, eddies, and fronts as well as along-trajectory processes such as accumulation of biomass that cannot easily be extracted from Eulerian fields. These features have the potential to reveal preferred habitats for marine species. This is important, as it will strengthen our capacity to predict where marine predators are, thus enabling to design more precise and dynamic conservation and fisheries management plans. Here, we present a method that tests for the selection for Lagrangian features in marine predators. We use HYCOM, a global data-constrained ocean circulation model to compute two different Lagrangian predictors, Finite-Time Lypanuov Exponent (FTLE) and dilation rate. We then couple these predictors with the TOPP (Tracking of Pacific Predators) dataset to assess the selection of Lagrangian features by 42 different species of marine predators, ranging from sea turtles to sharks, elephant seals, and whales.

Primary Presenter: Jerome Pinti, University of Delaware (pintijerome@gmail.com)

Authors:

Jerome Pinti, University of Delaware  (jpinti@udel.edu)

Helga Huntley, Rowan University  ()

Matthew Shatley, University of Delaware  ()

Aaron Carlisle, University of Delaware  ()

Barbara Block, Stanford University  ()

Matthew Oliver, University of Delaware  ()