Historical reconstruction of the population dynamics of southern right whales in the southwestern Atlantic Ocean
Understanding the recovery of whale populations is critical for developing population-management and conservation strategies. The southern right whale (SRW) Eubalena australis was one of the baleen whale species that has experienced centuries of exploitation. We assess here for the first time the po...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:8885757 2023-05-15T15:36:58+02:00 Historical reconstruction of the population dynamics of southern right whales in the southwestern Atlantic Ocean Romero, M. A. Coscarella, M. A. Adams, G. D. Pedraza, J. C. González, R. A. Crespo, E. A. 2022-02-28 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8885757/ https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-07370-6 en eng Nature Publishing Group UK http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8885757/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-07370-6 © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . CC-BY Sci Rep Article Text 2022 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-07370-6 2022-03-06T02:00:48Z Understanding the recovery of whale populations is critical for developing population-management and conservation strategies. The southern right whale (SRW) Eubalena australis was one of the baleen whale species that has experienced centuries of exploitation. We assess here for the first time the population dynamics of the SRW from the southwestern Atlantic Ocean at the regional level to measure numerically the effect of whaling and estimate the population trend and recovery level after depletion. We reconstructed the catch history of whaling for the period 1670–1973 by an extensive review of different literature sources and developed a Bayesian state-space model to estimate the demographic parameters. The population trajectory indicated that the pre-exploitation abundance was close to 58,000 individuals (median = 58,212; 95% CI = 33,329–100,920). The abundance dropped to its lowest abundance levels in the 1830s when fewer than 2,000 individuals remained. The current median population abundance was estimated at 4,742 whales (95% CI = 3,853–6,013), suggesting that the SRW population remains small relative to its pre-exploitation abundance (median depletion P(2021) 8.7%). We estimated that close to 36% of the SRW population visits the waters of the Península Valdés, the main breeding ground, every year. Our results provide insights into the severity of the whaling operation in the southwestern Atlantic along with the population´s response at low densities, thus contributing to understand the observed differences in population trends over the distributional range of the species worldwide. Text baleen whale Southern Right Whale PubMed Central (PMC) Scientific Reports 12 1 |
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Article Romero, M. A. Coscarella, M. A. Adams, G. D. Pedraza, J. C. González, R. A. Crespo, E. A. Historical reconstruction of the population dynamics of southern right whales in the southwestern Atlantic Ocean |
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Understanding the recovery of whale populations is critical for developing population-management and conservation strategies. The southern right whale (SRW) Eubalena australis was one of the baleen whale species that has experienced centuries of exploitation. We assess here for the first time the population dynamics of the SRW from the southwestern Atlantic Ocean at the regional level to measure numerically the effect of whaling and estimate the population trend and recovery level after depletion. We reconstructed the catch history of whaling for the period 1670–1973 by an extensive review of different literature sources and developed a Bayesian state-space model to estimate the demographic parameters. The population trajectory indicated that the pre-exploitation abundance was close to 58,000 individuals (median = 58,212; 95% CI = 33,329–100,920). The abundance dropped to its lowest abundance levels in the 1830s when fewer than 2,000 individuals remained. The current median population abundance was estimated at 4,742 whales (95% CI = 3,853–6,013), suggesting that the SRW population remains small relative to its pre-exploitation abundance (median depletion P(2021) 8.7%). We estimated that close to 36% of the SRW population visits the waters of the Península Valdés, the main breeding ground, every year. Our results provide insights into the severity of the whaling operation in the southwestern Atlantic along with the population´s response at low densities, thus contributing to understand the observed differences in population trends over the distributional range of the species worldwide. |
format |
Text |
author |
Romero, M. A. Coscarella, M. A. Adams, G. D. Pedraza, J. C. González, R. A. Crespo, E. A. |
author_facet |
Romero, M. A. Coscarella, M. A. Adams, G. D. Pedraza, J. C. González, R. A. Crespo, E. A. |
author_sort |
Romero, M. A. |
title |
Historical reconstruction of the population dynamics of southern right whales in the southwestern Atlantic Ocean |
title_short |
Historical reconstruction of the population dynamics of southern right whales in the southwestern Atlantic Ocean |
title_full |
Historical reconstruction of the population dynamics of southern right whales in the southwestern Atlantic Ocean |
title_fullStr |
Historical reconstruction of the population dynamics of southern right whales in the southwestern Atlantic Ocean |
title_full_unstemmed |
Historical reconstruction of the population dynamics of southern right whales in the southwestern Atlantic Ocean |
title_sort |
historical reconstruction of the population dynamics of southern right whales in the southwestern atlantic ocean |
publisher |
Nature Publishing Group UK |
publishDate |
2022 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8885757/ https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-07370-6 |
genre |
baleen whale Southern Right Whale |
genre_facet |
baleen whale Southern Right Whale |
op_source |
Sci Rep |
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8885757/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-07370-6 |
op_rights |
© The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-07370-6 |
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