On behalf of my co-authors I am pleased to announce the early view version of the online paper to be published in the next issue of Marine Mammal Science:

 

Estimation of Minke Whale Abundance from an Acoustic Line-Transect Survey of the NorthernMariana Islands

 

Authors: Thomas F. Norris, Kerry J. Dunleavy, Tina M. Yack & Elizabeth L. Ferguson

Link to online article:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mms.12397/abstract

 

DOI: 10.1111/mms.12397

Article ID: MMS12397

 

Abstract:

 

The minke whale is one of the most abundant species ofbaleen whales worldwide, yet is rarely sighted in subtropical waters. In the North Pacific, they produce a distinctive sound known as the “boing,” which can be used to acoustically localize individuals. A vessel-based survey using both visual and passive acoustic monitoring was conducted during the spring of 2007 in a large (616,000 km2) study area encompassing the Mariana Islands. We applied line transect methods to data collected from a towed hydrophone array to estimate the abundance of calling minke whales in our study area. No minke whales were sighted, but there were hundreds of acoustic detections of boings. Computer algorithms were developed to localize calling minke whales from acoustic recordings, resulting in over 30 independent localizations, a six-fold increase over those estimated during the survey. The two best estimates of abundance of calling minke whales were determined to be 80 and 91 animals (0.13 and 0.15 animals per 1,000 km2, respectively; CV = 34%). These are the first density and abundance estimates for calling minke whales using towed hydrophone array surveys, and the first estimates for this species in the Mariana Islands region. These are considered minimum estimates of the true number of minke whales in the study area.

 

Sincerely,

-Tom Norris