Introduction & Objectives

The Navy is mandated to increase knowledge about the potential consequences of Navy training on the long-term health of marine mammals in the Hawaiian Island region as part of the permit to conduct training and testing activities in the region. The Navy’s Hawaii Range Complex overlaps with the habitat of >30 species of protected whales, dolphins and one phocid species, the endangered Hawaiian monk seal (Neomonachus schauinslandi). It is, therefore, crucial to ensure a strong and locally-based science team to monitor the potential impacts of anthropogenic activities on these species.

The Navy’s marine mammal monitoring efforts in the region have thus far focused mainly on the use of satellite telemetry, photo-identification, and passive acoustic monitoring to examine broad-scale responses of animals to military activities. However, data on immediate short-term responses and effects on exposed animals are limited. Non-invasive archival tags now have the capacity to integrate several synchronized data streams (including high-resolution triaxial accelerometry, video and acoustic data) in odontocete, mysticete, and pinniped species. These tags provide an opportunity to measure fine-scale baseline data (Bejder et al., 2019) as well as short-term behavioral and physiological response metrics associated with a stressor (Mikkelsen et al. 2019; Elmegard et al., 2021; Czapanskiy et al., 2021). These baseline and acute response data are important to quantify effects of disturbance and to inform predictive models such as the Population Consequences of Disturbance framework (PCoD) (Booth et al. 2020; Pirotta et al., 2021).
With tag development evolving rapidly, it is important to continue the foundational work to generate an analysis platform that can be expanded to new tags, species and regions. This includes further development and training researchers to use the tag-analysis toolkit first developed by Stanford University. 

Because of its current effort and existing capacity, the Marine Mammal Research Program (MMRP) can ground truth, expedite, and disseminate the tools that will be derived from this project to other researchers working on Navy’s priorities and marine mammal conservation.
This effort is co-funded by National Marine Fisheries Service and the Office of Naval Research. 

Objectives: 

1) Data Collection on Species of Interest - Collect baseline behavioral and physiological data on species that are currently of interest to the Navy and NOAA through the deployment of non-invasive tri-axial accelerometer tags around the main Hawaiian Islands.
2) Behavioral Data Analysis - Use the collected accelerometry datasets to explore fine-scale behavioral signatures (e.g., locomotion, respiration, diving, vocalization) as well as their variability in response to anthropogenic stimuli.
3) Local Capacity Building - Generate training materials and build local capacity in Hawaii, ensuring that local researchers at the MMRP (Marine Mammal Research Program) and interested members of NOAA PIFSC, the Navy, and other community groups have the ability to work independently with accelerometry data in the field and in the lab.
4) Building Data Infrastructure - Build critical infrastructure and data-handling protocols at the MMRP lab, allowing for safe storage and easy data access for lab members and collaborators.

Technical Approach

In light of the background, funding was provided to employ Dr. Will Gough as a post-doctoral researcher. 

Tag support was provided on ten field expeditions. 

Based on the mysticetes tag-analysis toolkit developed by Stanford University, the toolkit was made available as an open resource in 2020 with a formal week- long training led by Dr. David Cade and Dr. Gough. This toolkit can be found on Github (https://github.com/cadede/CATS-Methods-Materials). The toolkit was used to analyze data for publications and presentations. 

Training was provided for students on methods related to collection, processing, and analysis of accelerometry data from CATS and other biologging tags. 

A section of the lab was established for tag setup, calibration, diagnostics, and data processing. This included physical and cloud-based data storage capacities for data storage, transfer, and backup. 

Progress & Results

1) Dr. Gough acted as primary tag support for five field expeditions, and secondary tag support for five additional expeditions. The goal of each expedition was to collect behavioral and movement data from species of interest using Customized Animal Tracking Solutions (CATS) biologging tags. These field expeditions also served Goal 3 (Local Capacity Building) in training graduate students and interns in tag preparation, deployment and data analyses. This resulted in a total of 95 tag deployments on species including humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae; HBW), false killer whales (Pseudorca crassidens; FKW), and short-finned pilot whales (Globicephala macrorhynchus; SFPW), and Hawaiian monk seals (Neomonachus schauinslandi). See report for details of each individual project. 

2) Dr. Gough progressed on a number of projects resulting in published (n=3), in review (n=1), and in-prep manuscripts (n=8) (outlined in Table 2). Many of these projects have directly or indirectly relied on insights obtained from tag data collected under this award. See report for list of manuscripts. 

3) Dr. Gough trained and mentored a host of collaborators and students (high school through PhD graduate candidates) on methods related to collection, processing, and analysis of accelerometry data from CATS and other biologging tags. At the graduate level, this has included seven PhD students from the MMRP lab, one PhD student from the UH Shark lab, and one PhD student from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. In addition, Dr. Gough developed and ran a workshop (March/April 2024) tarted to those in the Hawaiian research community working with accelerometer data. See report for details. 

The code necessary to perform these processing steps can be found in the CATS-Methods-Materials Github repository (https://github.com/cadede/CATS-Methods-Materials). Field protocols and guidance for how to work with this code can be found in the attached wiki (https://github.com/cadede/CATS-Methods-Materials/wiki). Dr. Gough’s website (https://www.wgough.com/cats-tag-information) gives additional information, including links to recordings of the 2020 workshop and a link to the previously published article describing the CATS processing methods (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40317-021-00256-w).

4) During the period of funding, Dr. Gough established a section of the lab devoted to tag setup, calibration, diagnostics, and data processing. This area includes two desktop computers with a full suite of relevant software and a dedicated staging area for field expeditions. He also enhanced the physical and cloud-based data storage capacities at the MMRP by implementing both 1) a local Synology network-attached server with enough storage space (~120 TB) for the entire MMRP lab and 2) a cloud-synced backup through UH’s KoaCloud system. The server and the KoaCloud backup can be accessed from anywhere in the world, allowing for faster data storage and transfer between lab members and collaborators, including those in the field or away on related travel. The KoaCloud backup also provides an additional level of security and resilience in the case of a catastrophic event (e.g., fire, flood) at the MMRP that incapacitates the Synology server.

As these storage solutions came on-line, Dr. Gough assisted multiple MMRP lab members to upload their data backups to the physical MMRP-based Synology server. They also updated the storage limit for the MMRP KoaCloud account to accommodate current and future data storage and backup needs.