**[Southern Resident Killer Whale Behavior Workshop]{.smallcaps}**

[April 20, 2004]{.smallcaps}

[NOAA NMFS Northwest Fisheries Science Center]{.smallcaps}

[2725 Montlake Blvd., East]{.smallcaps}

[Seattle, Washington]{.smallcaps}

**[[Final Report]{.underline}]{.smallcaps}**

**[[Workshop Objectives]{.underline}]{.smallcaps}**

The objectives of this workshop were to bring together Southern Resident
Killer Whale (SRKW) biologists involved in behavioral data collection to
discuss and develop some standards for the collection of behavioral data
on this population. It was a common finding of the recent NMFS SRKW
workshops that additional rigor and standardization of behavioral
sampling methodology was desirable to support the ongoing and upcoming
research projects relating to the recovery and stabilization of the
population. The intention of the workshop was to:

> 1\) Improve understanding of the methodology required for behavioral
> research, and methods and techniques that have been accepted in other
> taxa,
>
> 2\) Clarify terminology used to describe killer whale behavior,
>
> 3\) Improve research design, data collection, and data storage
> methodology beyond improvements in coding definitions,
>
> 4\) Coordinate data collection and exchange.

**[[Workshop Achievements]{.underline}]{.smallcaps}**

The first goal was achieved through a series of presentations in the
morning session of the workshop in which Dr. Philip Lehner (Faculty
Emeritus, Colorado State University and author of the Handbook of
Ethological Methods) presented a talk on "Considerations in Coding
Behavioral Data" (illustrations available online soon) and Jennifer
Marsh (MSc, San Diego State University and PhD student, University of
Washington) presented a talk on "A Review of Behavioral Coding of
Cetacean Behavior, With an Emphasis on the Behavior of Killer Whales"
(illustrations available online soon). Following these two
presentations, participants were invited to describe their data sets and
coding procedures, and to describe their perceptions of the issues
involved in quantifying killer whale behavior. This discussion extended
until after lunch and provided some progress towards the fourth goal of
the workshop, as participants learned a great deal about how, and why,
various groups were collecting data.

We made a great deal of progress towards the second goal through a
lengthy process of developing a mutually-agreeable series of behavioral
dimensions and ordinal categories of behavior within these dimensions.
This Concensus Coding Scheme, described in detail on the following
pages, is a molecular or bottom-up approach to coding behavior, in which
objective and quantifiable dimensions of behaviors are recorded in the
field and functional descriptions of behavior are left for later
interpretation. Our hope is that this scheme will influence the
development of rigorous coding systems, provide some consistency among
systems, and provide the "Rosetta Stone" by which differing coding
systems can define their codes in a common way. This achievement also
addresses the fourth goal of this workshop.

Relatively little time was available to achieve the third goal of the
workshop, improving research design, data collection, and data storage
methodology beyond improvements in coding definitions. Future workshop
efforts might address these issues, discussing experimental design and
statistics, benefits and costs of using archival data sets, improved
methods for acquiring and storing data (handheld PDA's, tablet PC's,
voice-recognition-coded data, etc.), and methodological issues like
assessment of inter- and intra-observer reliability. Future workshops
could also more explicitly address data sharing and exchange from both a
technological and a cultural point-of-view.

Finally, the workshop participants endorsed the value of interacting
with their peers in killer whale behavior research. Future workshops
should encourage exchange of information, reporting of interesting
results, and the development of new technical and intellectual
directions to addressing research needs of Southern Resident Killer
Whales, and cetaceans in general.

Workshop Participants

  --------------------------- -------------------------------------------
  Participant                 E-mail Address

  Ashe, Erin                  erinashe@hotmail.com

  Bain, David                 dbain@u.washington.edu

  Baird, Robin                rwbaird@dal.ca

  Barre, Lynne                Lynne.Barre@noaa.gov

  Dahlheim, Marilyn           Marilyn.Dahlheim@noaa.gov

  Ellifrit, Dave              orcasurv@rockisland.com

  Felleman, Fred              felleman@comcast.net

  Ha, James                   jcha@u.washington.edu

  Hanson, Brad                Brad.Hanson@noaa.gov

  Hanson, Cindy               firnortner@aol.com

  Jones, Linda                Linda.Jones@noaa.gov

  Kriete, Birgit              birgit@interisland.net

  Lehner, Philip              lehner@compuplus.net

  Marsh, Jennifer             jam3@u.washington.edu

  Mocklin, Julie              Julie.Mocklin@noaa.gov

  Noren, Dawn                 Dawn.Noren@noaa.gov

  Osborne, Rich               osborne@whalemuseum.org

  Parsons, Kim                Kim.Parsons@noaa.gov

  Smith, Jodi                 dyesqueen@rockisland.com
  --------------------------- -------------------------------------------

A Consensus Coding Scheme for Killer Whale Behavior

Developed by the participants in the SRKW Behavior Workshop, UW and
NMFS/NWFSC, 20 April 2004

[Concept]{.underline}

The participants agreed that future coding systems for SRKW behavior
work should emphasize descriptive, quantifiable definitions of SRKW
behavior, rather than the more common functional definitions currently
in use. To this end, the group adopted a molecular, bottom-up approach
to describing the behavior of killer whales. It was agreed that it may
be difficult or impossible to force very functional existing archival
data into these low-level categories, but that some attempt to re-define
existing behavior coding systems using these low-level definitions might
be beneficial.

[Coding Scheme]{.underline}

It would be most desirable for future SRKW behavioral work to explicitly
record the following information, and then to use post-data-collection
analysis techniques to examine the data for common clusters or sequences
of these behavioral dimensions. In lieu of this approach, we encourage
future coding systems to explicitly use these dimensions to define
short-hand behavioral codes for commonly observed "behaviors" consisting
of clusters of these dimensions. Examples are provided below.

[Primary Behavioral Dimensions]{.underline}

Orientation/Formation

-   Flank: side-to-side-to-side

-   Linear: head-to-tail

-   Non-linear: no particular orientation within group

Directionality

-   Directional: less than or equal to 90deg from previous direction of
    travel

-   Non-directional: deviation of greater than 90deg from previous
    direction of travel

Distance (generally estimated as average distance of group members)

-   Contact: physical contact

-   Tight: 0 to 10m from another animal

-   Loose: 10 to 100m

-   Spread: Greater than 100m

Speed

-   Motionless: 0 knots, "hanging", "logging"

-   Slow: less than 2 knots, less smooth or "jerky" surfacing

-   Medium: 2-6 knots, slow roll, "normal"

-   Fast: 6-10 knots, fast roll

-   Porpoising: greater than 10 knots, large portion of body out of
    water

[Additional Behavioral Dimensions]{.underline}

Behavioral Events

-   Generally well defined: good summaries are found in Jacobsen (1986,
    pgs 135-185, Kirkevold and Lockard, eds., Alan Liss, Inc.) and at
    the Center of Whale Research website
    ([www.rockisland.com/\~orcasurv/behavior.htm](http://www.rockisland.com/~orcasurv/behavior.htm))

Synchronicity

-   The degree to which events, or to a lesser extent states, occur
    together; a potential measure of social bonding

-   If recorded, an explicit definition of the time window for defining
    synchronicity should be provided

Respirations

-   Possibly recorded under Behavioral Events, this information is
    important to bioenergetic-based studies, and is therefore frequently
    a separate focus of data collection

Acoustics

-   A potentially important part of the behavioral repertoire, difficult
    to collect simultaneously, and therefore frequently a separate focus
    of behavioral data collection

Time

-   A component of the all of the dimensions above: we have attempted to
    minimize (but were unable to eliminate) the need for history of the
    behavior of an animal in order to code the current behavior, e.g.,
    to code directionality, the observer needs to know the direction of
    the animal's movement on the previous surfacing

-   Time recording as a dimension should be clearly defined: lengths of
    observation periods, units for coding sequences of behavior,
    intervals for sampling behavior

[Examples of Historical Functional Behaviors Defined in Behavioral
Dimensions]{.underline}

There was considerable debate about the ability to force past functional
definitions into the new, and admittedly better, coding dimensions, and
the usefulness of doing so. However, the following rough adaptations of
classic functional definitions may help in clarifying this new approach.

Rest: flank or non-linear orientation; directional; contact or tight
distance; slow speed; high synchronicity; lack of percussive events

Travel: any orientation; directional; any distance; slow, medium or fast
speed

Forage: flank or non-linear orientation; directional or nondirectional;
tight, loose or spread distance; slow, medium or fast speed; lunge or
chase events. Also possibly a pattern of alternating "milling" and
"traveling". Note: No consensus was reached by the participants on how
to define this functional behavior because there were concerns that this
behavior was too difficult to verify with observations from the water
surface. Specifically, foraging is hard to define, as there is a
spectrum of behaviors that can occur during the act of foraging.
Furthermore, depending on one's definition of foraging \[1) the acts of
searching for prey, handling prey, and consuming prey (if successfully
caught) or 2) only the acts of handling and consuming prey\],
identifying the occurrence of this behavior and/or quantifying how long
killer whales are engaged in this behavior will have critical
ramifications. These include erroneous estimates of total prey
consumption, incorrect calculations of energy budgets, etc. Some thought
that ground-truthing the definition for foraging with prey and behavior
studies conducted in unison was necessary.

Play: Any combination of categories of behavioral dimensions, i.e., any
distance, any orientation, and any speed. There are also specific
categories of play:

> 1\. Object play (kelp, floats)
>
> 2\. Social interactive play (touching, breaching, percussive
> behaviors)
>
> 3\. Solitary play

Milling: repeated, non-linear orientation; nondirectional; any distance;
slow or medium speed