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Description:Eastern North Pacific (ENP) gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) migrate annually between
foraging grounds in the Arctic and wintering grounds in Baja California (Rice and Wolman
1971). Females nurture their newborn calves in protected lagoons in Baja California Sur,
Mexico, and migrate north with them in the spring of each year. Shore-based counts of
female gray whales accompanying their calves (i.e., mother-calf pairs) have been conducted
annually from the Piedras Blancas Lighthouse Station in central California since 1994 with
the exception of 2020 due to COVID-19. Survey methods were evaluated in detail at the
outset of the study (Perryman et al. 2002) and both survey methods and the analytical
approach used to estimate total annual calf production have remained consistent through
the 2019 survey (Perryman et al. 2021).
In 2021, Stewart and Weller (2021) presented a new Bayesian modeling approach to
estimate annual calf production of ENP gray whales. This approach accounted for
uncertainty during unsampled periods (i.e., evenings, weekends, and during periods of
unworkable weather). Here we provide estimates of calf production for the 1994-2023
period using the Bayesian approach. A comparison of estimates between the methods of
Perryman et al. (2021) to those used by Stewart and Weller (2021) was provided in Eguchi
et al. (2022a).
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Rights Information:CC0 Public Domain
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