Assessment of the Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort Seas Stock of Bowhead Whales with Updated Abundance and Trend Data

• Main Author: Geof H. Givens
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1995
• Subjects: Chukchi
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.49.2914; http://www.stat.colostate.edu/~geof/documents/sc47as24.ps

In its 1994 assessment of the Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort Seas stock of bowhead whales, the Scientific Committee agreed to use a stock abundance estimate based on data from 1988 because the estimate from the more recent 1993 data was preliminary at that time. Analyses of these recent data have now been revised to produce updated abundance and trend estimates. We present here the results of an assessment like that completed by the SC in 1994, but using these revised abundance and trend estimates. 1 INTRODUCTION The Scientific Committee (SC) of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) used the Bayesian synthesis assessment method (Givens, 1993; Givens et al., 1995a; Raftery et al., 1995a) in its 1994 assessment of the Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort Seas stock of bowhead whales (IWC, 1995). Although a preliminary analysis of data on 1993 stock abundance was available, the SC chose not to include this analysis in their assessment because not all relevant data had yet been included in the analysis.