Summary
This thesis describes cetacean research in the Southern Ocean by the author. The work involved: initiating and developing the Southern Ocean Cetacean Ecosystem Program; conducting exploratory and further research; analysing, writing up and reporting on the results in refereed scientific journals, and to international management agencies. Research work was initiated in the 1995/96 season with two voyages, and developed into a long-term research program, which commenced in the 1997/98 season. Over the past decade scientists and managers have identified the need for long term research programs aimed at providing information consistent with a wholistic approach to the study of the marine environment. This ecosystem or multidisciplinary approach, and the development of appropriate methodology to integrate data from a wide range of disciplines collected over a broad range of scales, is relatively new. This is particularly true for large-scale marine ecosystems, like the Southern Ocean. The Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions (ANARE) conduct annual research and resupply voyages to the Australian Antarctic Territory waters. These voyages provide an exceptional platform of opportunity for cetacean sightings research, which had not been utilised until the development of the Southern Ocean Cetacean Ecosystem Program. Prior to the inception of the studies reported here, only ad hoc cetacean sightings were recorded from Australian Antarctic Division vessels, with no measure of accuracy of identification or effort. The only other long term cetacean monitoring program operating in the Southern Ocean was, and is, the Government of Japan/International Whaling Commission (IWC) sightings cruises which until recently were purely abundance estimate surveys, with no collection or interpretation of environmental parameters. The work reported here developed because a gap existed, an ideal platform for cetacean research was not being utilised, and the importance of