NAMMCO Workshop “Cetacean distribution and abundance in the North Atlantic”

NAMMCO organised a workshop held in connection with the Society for Marine Mammalogy conference. The Workshop titled “Cetacean distribution and abundance in the North Atlantic” and was held 28 and 29 October 2017 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

NAMMCO countries conducted cetacean surveys (NASS2015) and in 2016, other cetacean surveys were conducted by EU (SCANS-III), Ireland (OBSERVE), Canada, and USA. The report from the workshop can be found here.

The workshop goals were:

1. To generate a set of North Atlantic wide abundance estimates for 2015/16 for those cetacean species for which sufficient data are available.

Species to include: minke whale, fin whale, humpback whale, pilot whale, sperm whale, white-beaked dolphin, white-sided dolphin, common dolphin, bottlenose dolphin, harbour porpoise, beaked/bottlenose whales? others?

Estimates will be design-based, corrected for g(0) (if possible and if appropriate), and have appropriate measures of precision.

Outcomes: a complete set of estimates or, more likely, an incomplete set of estimates and an action plan to achieve a complete set in timely fashion.

2. To discuss modelling the spatial and temporal distribution and habitat use of cetaceans in the North Atlantic using data from 2015/16.

Discussions to include: the most important and available variables to inform modelling; the merits or otherwise of modelling the entire northern North Atlantic; the challenges of combining multiple datasets from different projects/platforms/methodologies; logistics of making this happen (who, how funded, when, etc); other?

Outcomes: an action plan for moving forward.

SMM Workshop Agenda and Provisional Schedule