The Humpback Whale Sentinel Program (HWSP) is the principal surveillance activity of the Antarctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AnMAP). AnMAP is a joint initiative between the Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research (SCAR), the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), and the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP) and is hosted by Griffith University. AnMAP seeks to ensure sufficient and reliable chemical data from the Antarctic region in support of global policy. The HWSP is a long-term biomonitoring program for surveillance of the Antarctic sea-ice ecosystem and chemical pollution. The HWSP overcomes many of the logistical and financial limitations of in-situ Antarctic monitoring, whilst achieving circum-polar surveillance. It does so by targeting a highly migratory, high-fidelity krill feeder. Through international collaboration, healthy, free-roaming humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) are biopsied annually along their migratory route in sub-tropical regions, accessible by local HWSP Breeding Stock Representatives. The program performs centralized quantification of the sentinel parameters of body condition, fecundity, and diet via validated chemical, biochemical, molecular, and histological methods. To date the Program has revealed both the extreme La niña event of 2020/11, as well as the first of now three record-breaking sea-ice lows in 2017.
Susan Bengtson Nash is the Development Lead for the Antarctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AnMAP), which seeks to ensure sufficient and reliable chemical data from the Antarctic region in support of global chemical policy. Susan obtained her PhD from the University of Queensland in 2006. She is a Professor at Griffith University, Australia, and is based within the Centre of Planetary Health and Food Security. Susan’s research activities are designed around the Foundation Research Pathways of AnMAP, namely: i) the input pathways of synthetic chemicals to Antarctica, ii) their environmental behavior and fate in a changing climate, iii) impacts to endemic biota, and, iv) surveillance. The primary environmental surveillance activity of AnMAP is the Humpback Whale Sentinel Program (HWSP), a long-term biomonitoring program for circumpolar surveillance of pollution and climate change impacts to the Antarctic sea-ice ecosystem. Susan is a scientific representative on the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings Committee for Environmental Protection, and serves on the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission.