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Technical Documentation, State of the Ecosystem Report

27 Right Whale Abundance

Description: Right Whale

Found in: State of the Ecosystem - Gulf of Maine & Georges Bank (2017+), State of the Ecosystem - Mid-Atlantic (2017+)

Indicator category: Synthesis of published information; Published methods

Contributor(s): Debra Palka

Data steward: Debra Palka,

Point of contact: Daniel Linden,

Public availability statement: Source data are available from the New England Aquarium upon request. Derived data are available here.

27.1 Methods

27.1.1 Data sources

The North Atlantic right whale abundance estimates were taken from a published document (see Linden 2023).

Calves birth estimates are available in Pace, Corkeron, and Kraus (2017), with more recent years shared here.

27.1.2 Data extraction

Data were collected from existing reports and validated by report authors.

27.1.3 Data analysis

Analysis for right whale abundance estimates is based on methods by Pace, Corkeron, and Kraus (2017), as documented most recently by Linden (2023). Data and code can be found in the following Github repository: NEFSC/PSD-NARW_popsize.

27.1.4 Data processing

Time series of right whale and calf abundance estimates were formatted for inclusion in the ecodata R package using this R code.

References

Linden, D. W. 2023. “Population size estimation of North Atlantic right whales from 1990-2022.” NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-NE-314. https://doi.org/10.25923/3v2z-j845.
Pace, Richard M., Peter J. Corkeron, and Scott D. Kraus. 2017. “State-space mark-recapture estimates reveal a recent decline in abundance of North Atlantic right whales.” Ecology and Evolution 7: 8730–41. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.3406.