SC/58/RMP4 Report of the Norwegian 2005 survey for minke whales in the Small Management Area CM around Jan Mayen

• Main Author: Nils Øien
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: MONITORING; SURVEY- VESSEL; ATLANTIC OCEAN; COMMON MINKE WHALE; Greenland; Jan Mayen; Greenland Sea; minke whale; Northeast Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.621.4996; http://www.iwcoffice.co.uk/_documents/sci_com/SC58docs/sc-58-rmp4.pdf

As part of a six-year program over the period 2002-2007 with the aim to get a new estimate of minke whale abundance in the Northeast Atlantic, the areas around Jan Mayen in the Greenland Sea, the Small Management Area CM, was surveyed with two vessels during the summer 2005. There were three planned blocks with a planned basic coverage of about 2,000 nautical miles. In total about 2,100 nautical miles were searched with primary effort. The most common species sighted were minke whales (67 groups seen from the primary platform), humpback whales (33 groups), fin whales (27 groups) and sperm whales (18 groups). In addition sightings were made of killer whales, Northern bottlenose whales, blue whales and unspecified dolphins. Opportunistic collections were made of biopsy samples from one minke whale and two fin whales, and photo IDs were collected from 16 humpback whales.