Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2024L00930:reg:2:p15
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2024L00930
Segment Type: reg
Provision Reference: reg 2 (pt 15/48)
Character Range: 102406–105387

et al. 2009, Charlton 2017), with varying percentages of whales sighted in the south‐eastern Australian region also sighted in the south‐western Australian region and vice versa, depending on the datasets used (Evans et al. 2021, Watson et al. 2021).
These movements along the Australian southern coast demonstrate the importance of coastal connecting habitat for southern right whales. The longest within season movement of ~1,600 km has been recorded between Cape Nelson (VIC) and Head of Bight (SA), whereas the longest between season movement of ~3,800 km was recorded between Sydney (NSW) and Israelite Bay (WA) (Watson et al. 2021). Furthermore, despite strong natal philopatry to calving areas, the first long-term re-location of a female to a different calving ground has been documented from Logans Beach in south-east Australia to Head of Bight in South Australia (Watson et al. 2021). This is consistent with the findings of Carroll et al. (2015) that mixing of whales from genetically distinct populations occurs along migratory corridors.

2.9         Migration, diet, and foraging grounds
Southern right whales demonstrate strong fidelity to feeding and breeding areas and are a highly mobile migratory species that can travel thousands of km's between habitats used for these essential life functions (Kenney 2018). The foraging ecology of southern right whales is poorly understood, and observations of feeding whales are rare. Feeding whales have been observed in the region of the Subtropical Front (41 – 44°S) in January and December and catches of whales from this region have recorded predominantly copepods in their stomach, while those caught at higher latitudes (south of 50°S) have been observed to have mainly krill (Townsend 1935, Bannister et al. 1997, Tormosov et al. 1998). Feeding has not been observed in coastal Australian waters, although other parts of the Australian Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) may be utilised for feeding (Torres et al. 2013).
A counter‐clockwise migration between foraging and breeding areas has been proposed, whereby whales from the south‐western population travel north to south‐eastern Australian waters before traveling west to their calving grounds (Burnell 2001). Current knowledge of summer feeding grounds is based on historical whaling data (Townsend 1935, Smith et al. 2012), habitat suitability models (Torres et al. 2013), recaptures of commercial whaling Discovery tags (Tormosov et al. 1998), photo-identification of individuals (Bannister et al. 1997, Bannister et al. 1999), and satellite tagging data (Childerhouse 2010, Mackay et al. 2020, Riekkola et al. 2021). Based on these datasets, southern right whales most likely forage south of Australia in the region of 30°S and 65°S within three likely foraging grounds; south-west of WA, waters associated with the Subtropical Front, and Antarctic waters (Childerhouse 2010, Mackay et al. 2020, Riekkola et al. 2021). Preliminary findings from stable isotope