Cetacean Sessions is back with Season 3!!

This year, Whale Scientists is in charge of organizing the sessions and hosting our guests. Join us for episode 13: we will discuss pilot whale and killer whale occurrence and interactions in Iceland. Our guest, Anna Selbmann, will discuss her recent publication in Acta Ethologica. Presentation and discussion will be followed by live Q&A with the audience.

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Cetacean Sessions is a bi-weekly seasonal webinar series where we discuss impactful recently published scientific research on cetaceans with those conducting it around the world. Season 3 is focused exclusively on early-career researchers' publications. Cetacean Sessions is informal, educational, interactive, and geared towards those working with or interested in cetaceans. You can register for sessions and follow our channel for free with no account creation necessary.

Anna is a PhD student at the University of Iceland, working with the Icelandic Orca Project. Her research is focussed on killer whale acoustics and their interactions with pilot whales. In a recent paper, she collaborated with researchers and whale-watching tour operators around Iceland to describe the occurrence of killer whales and pilot whales in Icelandic coastal waters and the interspecific interactions between the two species.

What Anna will cover during the presentation

The sightings data showed that the occurrence of the two species varied with region and season, with killer whales commonly observed in the south of Iceland during summer and in the west of Iceland during winter and spring. Pilot whales were only seen during the summer months, and whenever both species co-occurred, interactions were commonly observed. Interactions appeared to be antagonistic, with killer whales consistently avoiding pilot whales, similar to what has been described elsewhere in the North Atlantic. In the majority of interactions observed (~70%), killer whales avoided pilot whales by moving away, but in ~30%, a chase ensued with both species porpoising at high speed, indicating that these interactions may be more complex than previously described. Suggested drivers of the interactions include competition or anti-predator mobbing behavior.

Further research into the occurrence of both species and their interactions will be important to determine possible energetic impacts and inform conservation management. Currently, Anna is working on determining the role of acoustics in these interactions using playback experiments.

Whale scientists is a science communication platform created by two PhD students, Anaïs Remili and Naomi Mathew. It aims to share scientific knowledge with the public in a fun, entertaining way, to share tips with aspiring marine mammalogists on how to become whale scientists, and to share the incredible journeys of early-career researchers. You can find more info at: https://whalescientists.com/

Bay Cetology enables conservation and understanding of cetacean populations that are data deficient or threatened by climate change and human development. Our marine biologists and research technicians use various expertise to conduct field studies, analyze data, and communicate findings. Bay Cetology was founded by Jared Towers in 2017 and is based out of Alert Bay (Home of the Killer Whale) in the unceded traditional territory of the ‘Namgis First Nation, British Columbia, Canada. See more about our previous work and current projects at https://baycetology.org

Cetacean Session #13