The diffusion of cooperative and solo bubble net feeding in Canadian Pacific humpback whales

humpback-bubble-netting-NBDA
A network based diffusion analysis of humpback whale bubble net feeding in the Kitimat Fjord System (NE Pacific).

Please cite:

Wray, J.+, O'Mahony, É.+, Baer, G., Robinson, N., Dundas, A., Gaggiotti, O.E., Rendell, L., Keen, E.M. (in submission). The diffusion of cooperative and solo bubble net feeding in Canadian Pacific humpback whales.
+Shared lead authorship.

Maintained by Éadin N. O'Mahony ([email protected]).

A project in collaboration with the Gitga'at First Nation and BC Whales (www.bcwhales.org). We thank the Gitga'at First Nation, Kitasoo/Xai'xais First Nations, the Haisla First Nation and the Heiltsuk First Nation for their stewardship and collaboration. This work was carried out through a research agreement between the North Coast Cetacean Society (www.bcwhales.org) and the Gitga'at Oceans and Lands Department; and data was collected under the Department of Fisheries and Oceans research permit DFO XR 83 2014.

Key words
Megaptera novaeangliae, bubble net feeding, social learning, cooperative foraging, network-based diffusion analysis, long term monitoring, humpback whales.

Positionality and reflexivity statement
We comprise an international group of researchers with a range of expertise in various biological disciplines who are collaborating on this project asking questions about sociality and culture in humpback whales foraging within the traditional territories of the Gitga’at First Nation, the Kitasoo and Xai’xais First Nations, the Gitxaała First Nation and the Haisla First Nation. We have an equal gender balance but come from a diverse set of backgrounds and perspectives. Authors NR and AD are Gitga’at members who have been dedicated to the study and protection of marine mammals in Gitga’at territory for approximately two decades. Author JW is the co-founder and CEO of the North Coast Cetacean Society (NCCS) and EMK, ÉOM and GB are researchers within NCCS, which has been collaborating with the Gitga’at First Nation as an organisation since 2001, when permission to conduct research in the territory was granted and specific research agreements established. Authors EMK, ÉOM, GB, JW, LR and OEG recognise our intersecting social identities – we are all white and either living and working as settlers in Canada, or based at research institutions in Europe, from where we travel to spend time working with the Gitga’at in their unceded territory. We are striving to decolonise our research practices and acknowledge that we have much work to do on this still. Authors EMK, ÉOM, LR and OEG work in an academic system which affords us unearned privileges through its significant history of colonisation. All authors recognise that the biological sciences strive for objectivity, but we collectively believe it is critical in the process to decolonise ecology and evolution research that we address our inherent biases and belief systems. We therefore wish to state that we are motivated by a deep care for Earth’s biodiversity, and in particular hope to see cetacean species co-existing with our own in perpetuity. We advocate for other researchers within ecology and evolution research (and beyond) to self-reflect on their own positionalities and relationships to land and community. We thank the Gitga’at Oceans and Lands Department and the Gitga’at community for their continued support and collaboration on whale research and conservation.

Funding
This work was supported by the Save Our Seas Foundation grant number 217 (2010-2024); Government of Canada Habitat Stewardship Program (HSP-PAC, 2012-2024); Willow Grove Foundation (2010-2024); Donner Canadian Foundation (2018-2024); Zumwalt Family (2010-2020), World Wildlife Fund Canada (2018-2024), Liz Haan (2017-2024), Carol Newell (2018-2024) with the Endswell Foundation and The Makeway Foundation. ÉOM was supported by the Leslie & Charles Hilton Brown PhD Scholarship Fund (University of St Andrews School of Biology studentship). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

Author contributions (CRediT - Contributor Roles Taxonomy)
JW: data curation, funding acquisition, project administration, writing– review & editing; ÉOM: conceptualization, data curation, funding acquisition, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, project administration, validation, visualization, writing– original draft, writing– review & editing; GB: data curation, writing– review & editing; NR: data curation; AD: data curation; OEG: investigation, supervision, writing– review & editing; LR: conceptualization, investigation, methodology, supervision, writing– review & editing; EMK: conceptualization, data curation, investigation, visualization, writing– original draft, writing– review & editing.