Three months journeying of a Hawaiian monk seal
David R. Brillinger, Brent S. Stewart, Charles L. Littnan

TL;DR
This study models the movement of a Hawaiian monk seal over three months using a stochastic differential equation, revealing insights into its foraging behavior and habitat preferences in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
Contribution
The paper introduces a stochastic differential equation model with a time-varying potential function to analyze seal movement data, a novel approach for studying marine mammal foraging behavior.
Findings
Seal mainly stays southwest of Molokai
Estimated lengths and locations of foraging trips
Model fits the movement data reasonably well
Abstract
Hawaiian monk seals (Monachus schauinslandi) are endemic to the Hawaiian Islands and are the most endangered species of marine mammal that lives entirely within the jurisdiction of the United States. The species numbers around 1300 and has been declining owing, among other things, to poor juvenile survival which is evidently related to poor foraging success. Consequently, data have been collected recently on the foraging habitats, movements, and behaviors of monk seals throughout the Northwestern and main Hawaiian Islands. Our work here is directed to exploring a data set located in a relatively shallow offshore submerged bank (Penguin Bank) in our search of a model for a seal's journey. The work ends by fitting a stochastic differential equation (SDE) that mimics some aspects of the behavior of seals by working with location data collected for one seal. The SDE is found by developing a…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
