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An integrated approach to historical population assessment of the great whales : case of the New Zealand southern right whale

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Date
03/2016
Author
Jackson, Jennifer
Carroll, Emma Louise
Smith, Tim
Zerbini, Alexandre
Patenaude, Nathalie
Baker, C. Scott
Keywords
Whaling
Historical abundance
Southern right whale
Bottleneck
Recovery
GC Oceanography
GE Environmental Sciences
DAS
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Abstract
Accurate estimation of historical abundance provides an essential baseline for judging the recovery of the great whales. This is particularly challenging for whales hunted prior to twentieth century modern whaling, as population-level catch records are often incomplete. Assessments of whale recovery using pre-modern exploitation indices are therefore rare, despite the intensive, global nature of nineteenth century whaling. Right whales (Eubalaena spp.) were particularly exploited: slow swimmers with strong fidelity to sheltered calving bays, the species made predictable and easy targets. Here, we present the first integrated population-level assessment of the whaling impact and pre-exploitation abundance of a right whale, the New Zealand southern right whale (E. australis). In this assessment, we use a Bayesian population dynamics model integrating multiple data sources: nineteenth century catches, genetic constraints on bottleneck size and individual sightings histories informing abundance and trend. Different catch allocation scenarios are explored to account for uncertainty in the population's offshore distribution. From a pre-exploitation abundance of 28 800–47 100 whales, nineteenth century hunting reduced the population to approximately 30–40 mature females between 1914 and 1926. Today, it stands at less than 12% of pre-exploitation abundance. Despite the challenges of reconstructing historical catches and population boundaries, conservation efforts of historically exploited species benefit from targets for ecological restoration.
Citation
Jackson , J , Carroll , E L , Smith , T , Zerbini , A , Patenaude , N & Baker , C S 2016 , ' An integrated approach to historical population assessment of the great whales : case of the New Zealand southern right whale ' , Royal Society Open Science , vol. 3 , 150669 . https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.150669
Publication
Royal Society Open Science
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.150669
ISSN
2054-5703
Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2016 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
Description
E.C. was supported by a fellowship from the Tertiary Education Commission.
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/8429

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