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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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https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/articles/rj430622z

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  • 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.
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  • Jackson, J. A., Carroll, E. L., Smith, T. D., Zerbini, A. N., Patenaude, N. J., & 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, 3(3), 150669. doi:10.1098/rsos.150669
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  • 3
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  • The R code used in all population modelling can be found on DataDryad:
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  • Initial funding for this study was provided by the New Zealand Ministry of Fisheries through Project ZBD200505 to the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) which supported J.A.J., an Oregon State University General Research Fund, the Lenfest Ocean Program of the Pew Charitable Trust and a Marsden Grant from the Royal Society of New Zealand to C.S.B., Contract number 01-UOA-070. E.C. was supported by a fellowship from the Tertiary Education Commission and T.S. through the History of Marine Animal Populations (HMAP) project. This study is part of the British Antarctic Survey Polar Science for Planet Earth Programme, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council.
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