Lindsey Jones

• Master of Philosophy
• Managing Director at College of the Atlantic

North Atlantic (NA) humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) migrate between high-latitude maternal feeding grounds and low-latitude breeding/calving grounds, with one distinct breeding segment currently considered endangered: Cape Verde Islands/northwest Africa (CVI). This study assesses the movement patterns and population spatial structuring of...

Although killer whale (Orcinus orca) predation on humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) is rarely witnessed, resultant scars on humpback flukes provide evidence of non-lethal interactions. Humpback whale photo-identification catalogs from the North Atlantic were used to evaluate humpback flukes (n = 10,957) for the presence and severity of kille...

The endangered population of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) breeding and calving off the Cape Verde Islands (CVI) are known to migrate to feeding areas located along the eastern margin of the North Atlantic Ocean (Iceland, and Norway). Here, we report for the first time a confirmed migration of an individual humpback whale from CVI breedi...

Over the past several decades, the Gulf of Maine has experienced significant socio‐ecological change. Coastlines have become more densely populated and developed, rapid and dramatic climate change has affected coastal ocean environments, and seal populations have grown as a result of federal protections. Long‐term data sets from marine mammal stran...

Humpback whales ( Megaptera novaeangliae ) exhibit maternally driven fidelity to feeding grounds, and yet occasionally occupy new areas. Humpback whale sightings and mortalities in the New York Bight apex (NYBA) have been increasing over the last decade, providing an opportunity to study this phenomenon in an urban habitat. Whales in this area over...

Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) are one of the most well studied baleen whales worldwide and one of the species targeted during the historic North Atlantic whaling period. Northwestern Russia (Barents Sea), a poorly studied region for humpbacks, is recognized as an important fishing area for their prey capelin (Mallotus villosus). In the l...

We describe the development and application of a new convolutional neural network-based photo-identification algorithm for individual humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae). The method uses a Densely Connected Convolutional Network (DenseNet) to extract special keypoints of an image of the ventral surface of the fluke and then a separate DenseNet...

The humpback whale is a cosmopolitan species, found in all oceans with distinct populations. This species is not common within the Mediterranean Sea and is therefore classified as a ‘visitor’ species. Occasionally, they enter through Gibraltar Strait, even if their occurrence pattern within the Mediterranean remains unknown. Herein, we document fou...

Recent marine mammal recovery and growth of human populations in coastal areas has led to increased human harassment of protected pinniped populations. Yet, current monitoring approaches lack the necessary resolution to describe this emerging issue. We therefore propose a new classification scheme for monitoring of marine mammal–human interaction (...

Effective conservation of the endangered North Atlantic humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) which breeds in the eastern North Atlantic around the Cape Verde Islands off West Africa requires information about their spatio-temporal distribution, population size, and migratory patterns. Understanding temporal distribution is particularly important...

A humpback whale photographed in the waters of the British Isles, in Scotland, was resighted on the breeding ground of the Lesser Antilles, off Guadeloupe. This is the first humpback whale sighted off the British Isles to be documented in a breeding area. Fluke photographs of humpback whales from the British Isles (n = 77) were compared to the Nort...