Largest dataset of marine megafauna compiled by scientists

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A Western Australian scientist has compiled the largest global dataset ever on the travel habits of large marine animals. The collaboration involves hundreds of researchers from around the world and catalogs the migrations of some of the ocean's most charismatic animals.

There's more than 100 species featured, including whales, sharks, turtles, seals, penguins, dugongs and albatrosses.

The monumental task is the work of UWA senior researcher Dr. Ana Sequeira. With a vision for a global perspective on the movement of marine megafauna, she reached out to scientists around the world and invited them to contribute. So far, more than 300 researchers have shared their data.

Ana says working on a global scale offers a different perspective on the number of animals, the amount of habitat available to them and the different regions they may move through as they migrate around the world. Whales, for instance, can migrate from the Southern Ocean to the equator and back again every year.

"These animals don't know jurisdictional boundaries," Ana says. "They don't know where the exclusive economic zone finishes and if some waters are part of a country or another. To understand what they do, we need to investigate their movements at the scale they perform them."

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