Size and body condition drive the energetic cost of a baleen whale foraging in shallow habitat

Energy expenditure strongly influences an animal’s foraging decisions and activity budgets. Diving animals especially need to be energetically efficient because they exercise while oxygen is limited. By estimating the energetics of behavior, we can better understand the cascading effects of individual responses to disturbance and environmental change. Pacific Coast Feeding Group (PCFG) gray whales use a variety of foraging tactics in shallow habitats (<20 m), which present challenges associated with maneuverability and buoyancy. We use a seven-year dataset of concurrent individual behavior, morphology, and breath-by-breath respiration data collected via drone paired with two years of tri-axial accelerometry tag data to study patterns and correlates of respiration. We assess how several respiration metrics (acting as proxies for oxygen consumption) are associated with individual length, body condition and behavior (forage and travel), and test whether respiration reflects recovery from, or anticipation of, a foraging dive using Bayesian linear mixed effects models. Given model results, we simulated daily field metabolic rate (FMR) to explore how diving costs may affect energetics at a daily scale. We find that respiration reflects recovery from the preceding dive and that dives are more energetically expensive for longer, more buoyant whales. Longer dives and the most common foraging tactics also incur higher energetic costs. FMR simulations show that individual size and dive duration have the largest effects on energy expenditure. Thus, PCFG gray whale foraging success may be limited by the energetic costs associated with size and buoyancy, highlighting the costs of a shallow habitat foraging niche.