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Abundance of eastern North Pacific gray whales 2023/2024
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2024
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[PDF-1.11 MB]
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Description:The Southwest Fisheries Science Center (SWFSC) regularly conducts shore-based surveys of eastern North Pacific (ENP) gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) to estimate abundance. These estimates are obtained from visual survey data collected off central California between December and February during the gray whale southward migration and provide regular updates to a time series of abundance estimates that began in 1967 (Laake et al. (2012). In general, these surveys have recorded an increasing trend in ENP gray whale abundance until the 2015/2016 season. Since then, however, estimated abundances indicated a decline from 26,960 whales (95% CI = 24,420-29,830) in 2015/2016 to 14,526 whales (95% CI = 13,194 - 16,040) in 2022/2023 (Eguchi et al. 2023). This decline, which overlapped with a multi-year unusual mortality event (UME)1 that was declared in 2019 by NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service, raised concern about the status of the population. This report presents a new estimate of abundance for ENP gray whales migrating southward off the central California coast between December 2023 and February 2024.
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Rights Information:CC0 Public Domain
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