Population abundance, trend, structure and distribution of the endangered Antarctic blue whale - Satellite Tag

One aim of the Antarctic blue whale voyage was to attempt to deploy satellite tags on Antarctic blue whales in order to describe their movement and behaviour. This was the first time satellite tags had ever been deployed on Antarctic blue whales. Antarctic blue whale movement has been described using static location information such as that derived from the retrieval of a discovery-tagged whales, photo identification or acoustic data. These techniques however are unable to provide a continuous record of actual movements instead inferring movement from two (or more) known locations at two (or more) separate points in time. Actual movements of the whale between these points in time are not known. As such, detailed information such as large scale migratory movement between breeding and feeding grounds or even fine scale movement within a feeding ground remain poorly understood.