Abstract
Temperature changes have always had an affect on the migration patterns of animals throughout the world, ocean and land dwelling. This project determines the effect of temperature on the presence of porpoise whales in a particular area. If temperature affects the presence of harbour porpoise and harbour porpoise density is measured year-round along the coast of maryland, then porpoise whale density will be less at lower temperatures: 1.9°C, 3.6°C, 8°C, 13.6°C, 4.1°C; and be higher at higher temperatures: 18.8°C, 24.4°C, 27.2°C, 26.1°C, 22.2°C, 15.5°C, 10.2°C. The density of harbour porpoise whales on the coast of Maryland was collected year-round at two different sites by Duke University. Data was gathered by averaging the density for each month over a period of two years. Linear regression analysis was then used to find how much of an effect temperature had on the presence of harbour porpoise on the coast of Maryland. The linear regression analysis found that site one had a correlation coefficient of 0.6247 and site 2 had a correlation coefficient of 0.5944. This concludes that there is some correlation. The hypothesis was supported because the data shows that harbour porpoises prefer to live in warmer temperatures of water.