Chris Johnson

WWF Australia · Conservation

The distribution and use of pelagic habitat by sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) is poorly understood in the south-eastern Indian Ocean off Western Australia. However, a variety of data are available via online portals where records of historical expeditions, commercial whaling operations, and modern scientific research voyages can now be acces...

A new collaborative report from WWF and science partners provides the first comprehensive look at whale migrations and the threats they face across all oceans, highlighting how the cumulative impacts from industrial fishing, ship strikes, pollution, habitat loss, and climate change are creating a hazardous journey. Protecting Blue Corridors report...

Marine mammalsMarine mammals move through dynamic and heterogeneous environments to fulfill maintenance functions. These movements can be studied with various techniques that yield different types of information, and this is increasingly revealing the diversity of movement behaviors among marine mammals. These behaviors vary extensively in their ch...

In Antarctica, abundant consumers rely on Antarctic krill for food, but krill are also the subject of a commercial fishery. The fishery overlaps in time and space with the foraging areas of these consumers, thus potential competition between krill fisheries and krill consumers is a major management concern. The fishery is managed by the Commission...

Culture, a pillar of the remarkable ecological success of humans, is increasingly recognized as a powerful force structuring nonhuman animal populations. A key gap between these two types of culture is quantitative evidence of symbolic markers—seemingly arbitrary traits that function as reliable indicators of cultural group membership to conspecifi...

Bycatch, or the incidental capture of non-target species, poses a significant threat to marine biodiversity, especially where gillnet fisheries intersect with sensitive habitats. This study offers an integrated spatial-temporal analysis of dolphin bycatch within the gillnet fisheries of Pakistan's coastal waters, encompassing the Northern Arabian S...

Whales rely on critical ocean habitats – areas where they feed, mate, give birth, nurse young, socialise or migrate – for their survival. “Blue corridors” are movement routes for marine megafauna such as whales among different but ecologically interconnected areas essential to their survival. From the Bering Strait south to the temperate and tropi...

The krill surplus hypothesis of unlimited prey resources available for Antarctic predators due to commercial whaling in the 20th century has remained largely untested since the 1970s. Rapid warming of the Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) over the past 50 years has resulted in decreased seasonal ice cover and a reduction of krill. The latter is bei...

Tracking Antarctica - Responding to the Climate Crisis is an WWF policy report synthesizing latest climate science and technical reports related to the Southern Ocean. It was presented at the 2019 meeting by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) which currently does not include climate change information...

The Antarctic Peninsula and its whales are under increasing pressure from climate change, krill fishing and a growing tourism industry. New technologies such as digital tags, drones and satellite tracking are unlocking the mystery of exactly where baleen whales feed on krill, highlighting the need for increased protection of the Western Antarctic...

Tracking Antarctica is a WWF report featuring the latest science of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. It identifies and explains critical threats such as climate change on Antarctic biodiversity including krill, whales, seals and seabirds. The report highlights progress made on IUU (illegal) fishing and sustainable solutions to adapt to global cha...

Tracking Antarctica is a WWF report on the latest science of the Antarctic. It identifies and explains critical threats such as climate change on Antarctic biodiversity including krill, whales, seals and seabirds. The report highlights progress made on IUU (illegal) fishing and sustainable solutions to adapt to global change.

The distribution and use of pelagic habitat by sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) is poorly understood in the south-eastern Indian Ocean off Western Australia. However, a variety of data are available via online portals where records of historical expeditions, commercial whaling operations, and modern scientific research voyages can now be acces...

The distribution and use of pelagic habitat by sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) is generally poorly understood in Western Australia. However, a variety of data are becoming available via online portals where records of historical expeditions, commercial whaling operations, and modern scientific research voyages can now be accessed. Crowdsourci...

The Indian Ocean Sanctuary was established in 1979 in an effort to allow exploited stocks of whales to recover from Passed away in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami during fieldwork in Thailand. to establish comprehensive management and conservation measures for species within these waters. The current study took place in the offshore waters of Sri Lan...

Despite its central position in the Indian Ocean Sanctuary, little is known about the offshore cetacean fauna of the Maldives. Here we report survey results gathered by the R/V Odyssey in the Maldives during the 2003 and 2004 northeast monsoon seasons, and provide data on cetaceans from visual and acoustic observations. The survey was conducted ove...

The sperm whale is one of the very few deep diving mammal species in the Mediterranean Sea. Following a rare mass stranding of male sperm whales in the Adriatic Sea in December 2009, photo-identification methods were used in order to investigate previous sightings of the stranded whales in the region. Fluke photos of the stranded whales were compar...

Seventeen new sightings, and a total of 32 records, of the little-known Longman's beaked whale, (Indopacetus pacificus) (also called tropical bottle-nose whale or Indo-pacific beaked whale) are reported from the western Indian Ocean. Field identification features are reviewed, and the possibilities of confu-sion with other beaked whales are noted....