USAP-DC

An archive of baleen plates from 800 Antarctic blue and fin whales harvested between 1946 and 1948 was recently rediscovered in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. As baleen grows, it incorporates compounds from the whale’s diet and surroundings, recording continuous biological and oceanographic information across multiple years. The baleen record forms an ideal experimental platform for studying bottom-up, top-down and anthropogenic impacts on blue and fin whales. Such insights are likely impossible to obtain through any other means as blue and fin whales now number ~1 and 4% of their pre-whaling abundances. The baleen archive includes years with strong climate and temperature anomalies allowing the influence of climate variability on predators and the ecosystems that support them to be examined. Additionally, the impact of whaling on whale stress levels will be investigated by comparing years of intensive whaling with the non-whaling years of WWII, both of which are captured in the time series. We will use 1) bulk stable isotopes to examine the trophic dynamics of Antarctic blue and fin whales, 2) compound-specific stable isotope analysis (CSIA-AA) to characterize the biogeochemistry of the base of the Antarctic food web and 3) hormone analyses to examine the population biology of these species. These investigations will fill major gaps in our understanding of the largest krill predators, their response to disturbance and environmental change, and the impact that commercial whaling has had on the structure and function of the Antarctic marine ecosystem.

Person	Role
Fleming, Alyson	Investigator and contact
Friedlaender, Ari	Investigator
McCarthy, Matthew	Investigator
Hunt, Kathleen	Investigator

Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems	Award # 1947453
Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems	Award # 1927742
Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems	Award # 1927709

USAP-1927742_1

None in the Database

1. Alejandro Fernández Ajó, Kathleen E. Hunt, Danielle Dillon, Marcela Uhart, Mariano Sironi, Victoria Rowntree, C. Loren Buck, Optimizing hormone extraction protocols for whale baleen: Tackling questions of solvent:sample ratio and variation, General and Comparative Endocrinology, Volume 315,2022,113828. (doi:10.1016/j.ygcen.2021.113828)
2. Danielle Dillon, Alejandro Fernández Ajó, Kathleen E. Hunt, C. Loren Buck, Investigation of keratinase digestion to improve steroid hormone extraction from diverse keratinous tissues, General and Comparative Endocrinology, Volume 309, 2021, 113795. (doi:10.1016/j.ygcen.2021.113795)
3. Fleming, A., Pobiner, B., Maynor, S., Webster, D., & Pyenson, N. D. (2022). New Holocene grey whale ( Eschrichtius robustus ) material from North Carolina: the most complete North Atlantic grey whale skeleton to date. Royal Society Open Science, 9(7). (doi:10.1098/rsos.220441)