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Humpback whales enter Moreton Bay, in southeast Queensland, Australia, each year during their annual migration. Little is known about the ecological significance of the bay for the humpback whale population. In a region characterised by rapid coastal and maritime development, as well as a growing humpback whale population, there is an urgent need to fill knowledge gaps surrounding the populations’ seasonal distribution and habitat use in these coastal waters. This study procured the first detailed information regarding humpback whale distribution, behaviour, and habitat use within Moreton Bay, relative to the main east coast migratory corridor. It was found that on average 42.41% of the individuals observed on the southern leg of the migration entered the bay. 76.78% of pods entering the bay had accompanying calves and 47.82% of these pods were found to be resting or logging, a behaviour often associated with nursing, at the time of observation. These findings provide strong evidence for a previously undocumented role of Moreton Bay as a resting stopover for migrating humpback whales.

Abstract The ability to accurately gauge the body condition of free‐swimming cetaceans is invaluable in population and conservation biology, due to the direct implications that this measure has on individual fitness, survival, and reproductive success. Furthermore, monitoring temporal change in body condition offers insight into foraging success over time, and therefore the health of the supporting ecosystem, as well as a species’ resilience. These parameters are particularly relevant in the context of widespread and accelerated, climate‐induced habitat change. There are, however, significant logistical challenges involved with research and monitoring of large cetaceans, which often preclude direct measure of body condition of live individuals. Consequently, a wide variety of indirect approaches, or proxies, for estimating energetic stores have been proposed over past decades. To date, no single, standardized, approach has been shown to serve as a robust estimation of body condition across species, age categories, and in both live and dead individuals. Nonetheless, it is clear that streamlining and advancing body condition measures would carry significant benefits for diverse areas of cetacean research and management. Here, we review traditional approaches and new applications for the evaluation of cetacean energetic reserves. Specific attention is given to the criteria of measure performance (sensitivity and accuracy), level of invasiveness, cost and effort required for implementation, as well as versatility e.g. applicability across different species, age groups, as well as living versus deceased animals. Measures have been benchmarked against these criteria in an effort to identify key candidates for further development, and key research priorities in the field.

Background: Optimal timing for resection of asymptomatic congenital lung malformations (CLMs) remains controversial. The aim of this study is to define optimal timing for surgical intervention of patients with CLMs and define clinical variables that affect surgical outcomes.Methods: An IRB-approved retrospective analysis was conducted for patients undergoing surgery for CLMs between 2012 and 2017. Subjects were divided into cohorts based on timing of operative intervention. “Early intervention” was defined as surgery within 4 months of birth; “intermediate intervention”—between 4 and 6 months; and “late intervention”−6–12 months. Surgical outcomes including intraoperative estimated blood loss (EBL), surgical time, post-operative pneumothorax, length of time chest tube stayed in, and hospital length of stay were compared among the three groups using Fisher's exact test or Chi-squared test for categorical variables and one-way analysis of variance test for continuous variables.Results: We analyzed 63 patients who underwent surgery for CLM. There were no significant differences in baseline characteristics. Timing of surgery did not significantly correlate with post-operative outcomes. Specifically, there was no difference in operative time, EBL, post-operative pneumothorax, or length of hospital stay among the early, intermediate, and late intervention groups. Even after controlling for cyst-volume ratio (CVR), timing of surgery still did not affect post-operative outcomes.Conclusions: Surgical outcomes for resection of CLMs are not significantly affected by timing of surgery. We advocate for early intervention to decrease the incidence of associated complications that can occur with later intervention.