A spatially explicit estimate of the prewhaling abundance of the endangered North Atlantic right whale

The North Atlantic right whale (NARW) (Eubalaena glacialis) is one of the world's most threatened whales. It came close to extinction after nearly a millennium of exploitation and currently persists as a population of only approximately 500 individuals. Setting appropriate conservation targets...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Conservation biology 2016-08, Vol.30 (4), p.783-791
Main Authors: Monsarrat, Sophie, Pennino, M. Grazia, Smith, Tim D., Reeves, Randall R., Meynard, Christine N., Kaplan, David M., Rodrigues, Ana S.L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Atlantic Ocean
caza de ballenas
Cetacea
Conservation of Natural Resources
Endangered & extinct species
Endangered Species
Estimating techniques
Eubalaena
Eubalaena glacialis
Eubalaena japonica
feeding grounds
generalized additive modeling
historical baseline
Life Sciences
línea base histórica
modelado aditivo generalizado
Population Density
Population Dynamics
population size
Spatial analysis
tamaño de población
Whales
Whales & whaling
whaling
áreas de alimentación
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Summary:The North Atlantic right whale (NARW) (Eubalaena glacialis) is one of the world's most threatened whales. It came close to extinction after nearly a millennium of exploitation and currently persists as a population of only approximately 500 individuals. Setting appropriate conservation targets for this species requires an understanding of its historical population size, as a baseline for measuring levels of depletion and progress toward recovery. This is made difficult by the scarcity of records over this species' long whaling history. We sought to estimate the preexploitation population size of the North Atlantic right whale and understand how this species was distributed across its range. We used a spatially explicit data set on historical catches of North Pacific right whales (NPRWs) (Eubalaena japonica) to model the relationship between right whale relative density and the environment during the summer feeding season. Assuming the 2 right whale species select similar environments, we projected this model to the North Atlantic to predict how the relative abundance of NARWs varied across their range. We calibrated these relative abundances with estimates of the NPRW total prewhaling population size to obtain high and low estimates for the overall NARW population size prior to exploitation. The model predicted 9,075-21,328 right whales in the North Atlantic. The current NARW population is thus
ISSN:0888-8892
1523-1739
DOI:10.1111/cobi.12664