Estimating Bowhead Whale, Balaena mysticetus, Population Size and Rate of Increase from the 1993 Census

• Main Authors: Adrian E. Raftery, Judith E. Zeh
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Springer-Verlag 1996
• Subjects: Balaena mysticetus; Barrow; bowhead whale; eskimo*; Point Barrow; Alaska
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.50.5027; http://stat.washington.edu/www/research/reports/1996/tr303.ps

Estimating the population size and rate of increase of bowhead whales, Balaena mysticetus, is important because bowheads were the first species of great whale for which commercial whaling stopped and so their status indicates the recovery prospects of other great whales, and also because this information is used by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to set the aboriginal subsistence whaling quota for Alaskan Eskimos. We describe the 1993 visual and acoustic census off Point Barrow, Alaska, which provides the best data available for estimating these quantities. We outline the definitive version of two statistical methods for estimating the population, the generalized removal method and the Bayes empirical Bayes method. The two methods give results that are close. The estimate of bowhead population size most recently accepted by the IWC Scientific Committee, 8200 with 95% estimation interval from 7200 to 9400, is based on the Bayes empirical Bayes posterior distribution presente.