U.S. Pacific marine mammal stock assessments, 2014.

• Main Authors: Carretta, James V., Oleson, Erin M. Erin Marie, 1977-, Weller, David William, 1963-, Lang, Aimée R., Forney, Karin A., Baker, Jason Daniel, Muto, M. Marcia, Hanson, Brad, Orr, Anthony James, Huber, Harriet R., Lowry, Mark S., Barlow, Jay, Moore, Jeffrey E., 1974-, Lynch, Deanna, Carswell, Lilian, 1968-, Brownell, Robert L.
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Marine Fisheries Service, Southwest Fisheries Science Center 2015
• Subjects: Marine mammal populations > Estimates > Pacific Coast U.S.; Marine mammal populations > Estimates > Hawaii > Pacific Coast.; Pacific; Barlow; Killer Whale; Sperm whale; Alaska
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.7289/v5/tm-swfsc-549; https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/5017

The 2014 Pacific marine mammal stock assessments include revised reports for 11 Pacific marine mammal stocks under NMFS jurisdiction, including six 'strategic' stocks: Hawaiian monk seal, Southern Resident killer whale, Main Hawaiian Islands Insular false killer whale, Hawaii Pelagic false killer whale, California/Oregon/Washington sperm whale, and Western North Pacific gray whale. New abundance estimates are available for three stocks in the Pacific Islands region and five U.S. west coast stocks. New estimates of abundance for the California/Oregon/Washington stock of sperm whales are based on a Bayesian trend analysis that utilizes previously collected line-transect data (Moore and Barlow, 2014), resulting in a more stable time series of abundance estimates. Mortality and serious injury estimates of California/Oregon/Washington sperm whales in California drift gillnets are updated, based on pooling additional years of data (>5 years) to reduce bias and improve precision in mean annual bycatch estimates (Carretta and Moore 2014). The combination of new abundance estimates and pooling of bycatch estimates over a longer time period for this stock of sperm whales results in mean annual bycatch estimates that no longer exceed PBR. In addition, a new stock assessment report for Western North Pacific gray whales is presented for the first time, prompted by new data showing that gray whales previously photographed in the western North Pacific utilize U.S. and Mexican waters. Stock Assessments for Alaska region marine mammals are published by the National Marine Mammal Laboratory (NMML) in a separate report.