Publications by authors named "Mingxiang Niu"

The Shandong Peninsula is located on the western coast of the Pacific and is adjacent to the Bohai Sea (BS) and the Yellow Sea (YS) to the east. The East Asian finless porpoise , a subspecies of the narrow-ridged finless porpoise , is the dominant cetacean resident along the Shandong Peninsula. However, there is insufficient monitoring data to determine the status of the cetacean species in this region.

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Once an important cetacean habitat, the Miaodao Archipelago has been altered by human-induced disturbances over several decades. While cetacean diversity is known to have decreased, no recent data on species diversity around Miaodao are known to exist. Capitalizing on the high vocal activity of cetaceans, three passive acoustic surveys, including towed and stationary types, were undertaken to detect the presence of species-specific vocalizations in May 2021, October 2021, and July 2022, as most cetacean sightings occurred during May and August in recent years.

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The associations between feeding activities and environmental variables inform animal feeding tactics that maximize energetic gains by minimizing energy costs while maximizing feeding success. Relevant studies in aquatic animals, particularly marine mammals, are scarce due to difficulties in the observation of feeding behaviors in aquatic environments. This data scarcity concurrently hinders ecosystem-based fishery management in the context of small toothed-cetacean conservation.

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Abstract: This paper studied the inter-annual variations in the spatial distribution of wintering anchovy (Engraulis japonicus) in central and southern Yellow Sea, based on the 1986-2010 bottom trawl survey data and related sea surface temperature (SST) data obtained by remote sensing, and approached the relationships between the inter-annual variations in the spatial distribution of the wintering anchovy and the SST, by using GIS technique, spatial analysis and correlation analysis. In 1986-2010, the wintering anchovy in the study area had apparent inter-annual variations in spatial distribution, with its abundance dropped to the lowest level and its distribution moved shoreward in 2004, and the abundance rebounded and centralized in the eastern waters in 2010. The centralized distribution regions of the anchovy's capture locations and stock density in longitudinal and latitudinal directions also had apparent inter-annual variations.

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