MegaMove’s pioneering paper “Convergence of marine megafauna movement patterns in coastal and open oceans” led by Dr Ana Sequeira has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

In this study, we have mapped the global movements of more than 2,500 tagged marine animals from 50 species around the world, to discover that that despite significant differences in body size, shape and mode of movement, marine animals move through the ocean in similar ways.

The differences found across all species were rather associated with where these species were moving through, and is potentially linked with the way they use different marine habitats. Results showed that movement in oceanic habitats was more directed (straight towards a key location) while in coastal environments movement was more complex.

This suggests that animals may be capable of adapting their behaviour to changes in habitat providing hope of these animals’ higher resilience to a rapidly changing, coastal marine environment.