Scholars@Duke
Robert Schick

Robert Schick

Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Division of Marine Science and Conservation
Marine Science and Conservation
robert.schick@duke.edu
Box 90328, Durham, NC 27708-0328
A328 LSRC, Durham, NC 27708

Selected Publications

Unobserved Individual and Population Level Impacts of Fishing Gear Entanglements on North Atlantic Right Whales

Journal Article Animal Conservation · October 1, 2025 Fishing gear entanglements can compromise health and lower survival and reproductive output of wildlife, which can slow population growth or cause population declines. However, entanglements may go unobserved, making it difficult to quantify their effects ... Full text Cite

Joint spatiotemporal modelling of zooplankton and whale abundance in a dynamic marine environment

Journal Article Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C: Applied Statistics · August 1, 2025 AbstractNorth Atlantic right whales are an endangered species. Their entire population is estimated to be approximately 372 individuals, and they are subject to major anthropogenic threats. They feed on zoop ... Full text Cite

Analyzing Whale Calling through Hawkes Process Modeling

Journal Article Journal of the American Statistical Association · January 1, 2025 Sound is assumed to be the primary modality of communication among marine mammal species. Analyzing acoustic recordings helps to understand the function of the acoustic signals as well as the possible impact of anthropogenic noise on acoustic behavior. Mot ... Full text Cite

A workflow of open-source tools for drone-based photogrammetry of marine megafauna.

Journal Article PeerJ · January 2025 Drones have revolutionized researchers' ability to obtain morphological data on megafauna, particularly cetaceans. The last decade has seen a surge in studies using drones to distinguish morphological differences among populations, calculate energetic rese ... Full text Cite

ASSESSING MARINE MAMMAL ABUNDANCE: A NOVEL DATA FUSION

Journal Article Annals of Applied Statistics · December 1, 2024 Marine mammals are increasingly vulnerable to human disturbance and climate change. Their diving behavior leads to limited visual access during data collection, making studying the abundance and distribution of marine mammals challenging. In theory, using ... Full text Cite

Estimating received level in behavioral response studies through the use of ancillary data.

Journal Article The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · December 2024 Marine mammals are known to respond to various human noises, including and in certain cases, strongly, to military active sonar. Responses include small and short-term changes in diving behavior, horizontal avoidance of an ensonified area, and mass strandi ... Full text Cite

Decreasing body size is associated with reduced calving probability in critically endangered North Atlantic right whales.

Journal Article Royal Society open science · February 2024 Body size is key to many life-history processes, including reproduction. Across species, climate change and other stressors have caused reductions in the body size to which animals can grow, called asymptotic size, with consequences for demography. A reduc ... Full text Cite

Space-time multi-level modeling for zooplankton abundance employing double data fusion and calibration

Journal Article Environmental and Ecological Statistics · December 1, 2023 An important objective for marine biologists is to forecast the distribution and abundance of planktivorous marine predators. To do so, it is critically important to understand the spatiotemporal dynamics of their prey. Here, the prey we study are zooplank ... Full text Cite

Estimating the effects of stressors on the health, survival and reproduction of a critically endangered, long-lived species

Journal Article Oikos · May 1, 2023 Quantifying the cumulative effects of stressors on individuals and populations can inform the development of effective management and conservation strategies. We developed a Bayesian state–space model to assess the effects of multiple stressors on individu ... Full text Cite

TIME-DISCRETIZATION APPROXIMATION ENRICHES CONTINUOUS-TIME DISCRETE-SPACE MODELS FOR ANIMAL MOVEMENT

Journal Article Annals of Applied Statistics · March 1, 2023 Continuous time discrete state models are a valuable tool for explaining animal movement. However, data collection to fit such models over a spec-ified window of time can be misaligned with the actual realization of the movement process. This necessitates ... Full text Cite

No free lunch: estimating the biomass and ex-vessel value of target catch lost to depredation by odontocetes in the Hawai’i longline tuna fishery

Journal Article Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences · January 1, 2023 Depredation by marine predators causes economic losses and impacts depredating species and fish stocks. To understand these impacts, it is important to accurately estimate catch losses from depredation. Pelagic longline fisheries are susceptible to depreda ... Full text Cite

Kernel density estimation of conditional distributions to detect responses in satellite tag data

Journal Article Animal Biotelemetry · December 1, 2022 Background: As levels of anthropogenic noise in the marine environment rise, it is crucial to quantify potential associated effects on marine mammals. Yet measuring responses is challenging because most species spend the majority of their time submerged. C ... Full text Cite

Seasonal gain in body condition of foraging humpback whales along the Western Antarctic Peninsula

Journal Article Frontiers in Marine Science · November 21, 2022 Most baleen whales are capital breeders that use stored energy acquired on foraging grounds to finance the costs of migration and reproduction on breeding grounds. Body condition reflects past foraging success and can act as a proxy for individual fitness. ... Full text Cite

Estimating uncertainty in density surface models

Journal Article Peerj · August 23, 2022 Providing uncertainty estimates for predictions derived from species distribution models is essential for management but there is little guidance on potential sources of uncertainty in predictions and how best to combine these. Here we show where uncertain ... Full text Cite

Fishing gear entanglement threatens recovery of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales

Journal Article Conservation Science and Practice · August 1, 2022 North Atlantic right whales frequently become entangled in fishing gear, which can negatively affect their reproductive output and probability of survival. We estimated individual whale health from a hierarchical Bayesian model fit to photographic indices ... Full text Cite

A fine-scale marine mammal movement model for assessing long-term aggregate noise exposure

Journal Article Ecological Modelling · February 1, 2022 Understanding the impacts of anthropogenic sound on marine mammals is important for effective mitigation and management. Sound impacts can cause behavioral changes that lead to displacement from preferred habitat and can have negative influence on vital ra ... Full text Cite

Comparing Uncertainty Associated With 1-, 2-, and 3D Aerial Photogrammetry-Based Body Condition Measurements of Baleen Whales

Journal Article Frontiers in Marine Science · November 26, 2021 Body condition is a crucial and indicative measure of an animal’s fitness, reflecting overall foraging success, habitat quality, and balance between energy intake and energetic investment toward growth, maintenance, and reproduction. Recently, drone-based ... Full text Cite

Bayesian approach for predicting photogrammetric uncertainty in morphometric measurements derived from drones

Journal Article Marine Ecology Progress Series · September 2, 2021 Increasingly, drone-based photogrammetry has been used to measure size and body condition changes in marine megafauna. A broad range of platforms, sensors, and altimeters are being applied for these purposes, but there is no unified way to predict photogra ... Full text Cite

Continuous-Time Discrete-State Modeling for Deep Whale Dives

Journal Article Journal of Agricultural Biological and Environmental Statistics · June 1, 2021 Understanding unexposed/baseline behavior of marine mammals is required to assess the effects of increasing levels of anthropogenic noise exposure in the marine environment. However, quantifying variation in the baseline behavior of whales is challenging d ... Full text Cite

REVIEW: Assessing North Atlantic right whale health: threats, and development of tools critical for conservation of the species.

Journal Article Diseases of aquatic organisms · February 2021 Whaling has decimated North Atlantic right whales Eubalaena glacialis (NARW) since the 11th century and southern right whales E. australis (SRW) since the 19th century. Today, NARWs are Critically Endangered and decreasing, whereas SRWs are recovering. We ... Full text Cite

Accounting for positional uncertainty when modeling received levels for tagged cetaceans exposed to sonar

Journal Article Aquatic Mammals · January 1, 2019 Exposure to anthropogenic sound can have a range of negative behavioral and physical effects on marine species and is of increasing ecological and regulatory concern. In particular, the response of marine mammals, and notably the family of cryptic deep-div ... Full text Cite

Understanding the population consequences of disturbance.

Journal Article Ecology and evolution · October 2018 Managing the nonlethal effects of disturbance on wildlife populations has been a long-term goal for decision makers, managers, and ecologists, and assessment of these effects is currently required by European Union and United States legislation. However, r ... Full text Cite

Mesoscale activity facilitates energy gain in a top predator.

Journal Article Proceedings. Biological sciences · August 2018 How animal movement decisions interact with the distribution of resources to shape individual performance is a key question in ecology. However, links between spatial and behavioural ecology and fitness consequences are poorly understood because the outcom ... Full text Cite

MapMySmoke: Feasibility of a new quit cigarette smoking mobile phone application using integrated geo-positioning technology, and motivational messaging within a primary care setting

Journal Article Pilot and Feasibility Studies · April 25, 2018 Background: Approximately 11,000 people die in Scotland each year as a result of smoking-related causes. Quitting smoking is relatively easy; maintaining a quit attempt is a very difficult task with success rates for unaided quit attempts stubbornly remain ... Full text Cite

An experiment on the impact of a neonicotinoid pesticide on honeybees: the value of a formal analysis of the data

Journal Article Environmental Sciences Europe · December 1, 2017 Background: We assess the analysis of the data resulting from a field experiment conducted by Pilling et al. (PLoS ONE. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0077193, 5) on the potential effects of thiamethoxam on honeybees. The experiment had low levels of replicatio ... Full text Cite

Effects of Model Formulation on Estimates of Health in Individual Right Whales (Eubalaena glacialis).

Chapter · January 2016 Right whales are vulnerable to many sources of anthropogenic disturbance including ship strikes, entanglement with fishing gear, and anthropogenic noise. The effect of these factors on individual health is unclear. A statistical model using photographic ev ... Full text Cite

Expert elicitation of seasonal abundance of North Atlantic right whales Eubalaena glacialis in the mid-Atlantic

Journal Article Endangered Species Research · January 1, 2016 North Atlantic right whales Eubalaena glacialis are among the most endangered of the large whales. Although protected since 1935, their abundance has remained low. Right whales occupy the Atlantic Ocean from southern Greenland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence ... Full text Cite

Health of North Atlantic right whales Eubalaena glacialis over three decades: From individual health to demographic and population health trends

Journal Article Marine Ecology Progress Series · January 1, 2016 Marine mammals are faced with increasing challenges from environmental fluctuation, climate change, and disturbances from human activities. Anthropogenic mortalities have been well documented, but it is difficult to assess the sub-lethal effects of disturb ... Full text Cite

Foraging strategy switch of a top marine predator according to seasonal resource differences

Journal Article Frontiers in Marine Science · January 1, 2015 The spatio-temporal variability in marine resources influences the foraging behavior and success of top marine predators. However, little is known about the links between these animals and ocean productivity, specifically, how plankton density influences t ... Full text Cite

Using short-term measures of behaviour to estimate long-term fitness of southern elephant seals

Journal Article Marine Ecology Progress Series · January 27, 2014 Environmental changes (a type of disturbance) are altering the habitat of southern elephant seals Mirounga leonina, an apex marine predator in the Southern Ocean. As a result, individuals may shift their behaviour, spending more time in transit and less ti ... Full text Cite

Combined ecological momentary assessment and global positioning system tracking to assess smoking behavior: a proof of concept study.

Journal Article J Dual Diagn · 2014 OBJECTIVE: Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) methods have provided a rich assessment of the contextual factors associated with a wide range of behaviors including alcohol use, eating, physical activity, and smoking. Despite this rich database, this inf ... Full text Link to item Cite

Pelagic movements of pacific leatherback turtles (dermochelys coriacea) highlight the role of prey and ocean currents

Journal Article Movement Ecology · November 20, 2013 Background: Leatherback turtles are renowned for their trans-oceanic migrations. However, despite numerous movement studies, the precise drivers of movement patterns in leatherbacks remain elusive. Many previous studies of leatherback turtles as well as ot ... Full text Cite

Estimating resource acquisition and at-sea body condition of a marine predator.

Journal Article The Journal of animal ecology · November 2013 1. Body condition plays a fundamental role in many ecological and evolutionary processes at a variety of scales and across a broad range of animal taxa. An understanding of how body condition changes at fine spatial and temporal scales as a result of inter ... Full text Cite

Estimating resource acquisition and at-sea body condition of a marine predator

Journal Article Journal of Animal Ecology · November 1, 2013 Body condition plays a fundamental role in many ecological and evolutionary processes at a variety of scales and across a broad range of animal taxa. An understanding of how body condition changes at fine spatial and temporal scales as a result of interact ... Full text Cite

Using hierarchical bayes to understand movement, health, and survival in the endangered north atlantic right whale.

Journal Article PloS one · January 2013 Body condition is an indicator of health, and it plays a key role in many vital processes for mammalian species. While evidence of individual body condition can be obtained, these observations provide just brief glimpses into the health state of the animal ... Full text Cite

Characterizing connectivity relationships in freshwaters using patch-based graphs

Journal Article Landscape Ecology · February 1, 2012 Spatial graphs in landscape ecology and conservation have emerged recently as a powerful methodology to model patterns in the topology and connectivity of habitat patches (structural connectivity) and the movement of genes, individuals or populations among ... Full text Cite

Community structure in pelagic marine mammals at large spatial scales as revealed by multivariate ordination

Journal Article Marine Ecology Progress Series · 2011 The understanding of a species’ niche is fundamental to the concept of ecology, yet relatively little work has been done on niches in pelagic marine mammal communities. Data collection on the distribution and abundance of marine mammals is costly, time con ... Full text Link to item Cite

Network thinking in riverscape conservation - A graph-based approach

Journal Article Biological Conservation · January 1, 2011 Graph theoretic approaches have received increased interest recently in landscape planning and conservation in the terrestrial realm, because these approaches facilitate the effective modelling of connectivity among habitats. We examined whether basic prin ... Full text Cite

Graph models of habitat mosaics.

Journal Article Ecol Lett · March 2009 Graph theory is a body of mathematics dealing with problems of connectivity, flow, and routing in networks ranging from social groups to computer networks. Recently, network applications have erupted in many fields, and graph models are now being applied i ... Full text Link to item Cite

Striking the right balance in right whale conservation

Journal Article Canadian Journal of Fisheries & Aquatic Sciences · 2009 Cite

Inclusion of prey data improves prediction of bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) distribution

Journal Article Fisheries Oceanography · January 1, 2009 We examined the distribution of Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) in the Gulf of Maine, Northwest Atlantic Ocean, from 17 to 23 August 1995, in relation to physical and biological parameters. Specifically, we fit a binomial GLM to the bluefin tuna pr ... Full text Cite

Understanding movement data and movement processes: current and emerging directions

Journal Article Ecol Letters · October 2008 ABSTRACT Animal movement has been the focus on much theoretical and empirical work in ecology over the last 25 years. By studying the causes and consequences of individual movement, ecologists have gained greater insight into the behavior of individuals a ... Full text Link to item Cite

Directed connectivity among fish populations in a riverine network

Journal Article Journal of Applied Ecology · December 1, 2007 1. The addition of large water storage dams to rivers in California's Central Valley blocked access to spawning habitat and has resulted in a dramatic decline in the distribution and abundance of spring-run chinook salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha (Walbaum ... Full text Cite

Geospatial web services within a scientific workflow: Predicting marine mammal habitats in a dynamic environment

Journal Article Ecological Informatics · January 1, 2007 Our ability to inform conservation and management of species is fundamentally limited by the availability of relevant biogeographic data, use of statistically robust predictive models, and presentation of results to decision makers. Despite the ubiquity of ... Full text Cite

Spatial distribution and environmental correlates of Australian snubfin and Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins

Journal Article Ecography · June 1, 2006 We present data on the spatial distribution of Australian snubfin and humpback dolphins using boat-based line transect surveys in three adjacent bays located in the Far Northern Section of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, northeast Queensland. We used G ... Full text Cite

Spatial components of bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) distribution in the Alaskan Beaufort Sea

Journal Article Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences · January 1, 2000 Bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) on their fall migration are exposed to oil exploration activities in the Alaskan Beaufort Sea. While previous research into the effect of industrial noise on whale behavior and distribution has noted significant response ... Full text Cite