An integrated approach to historical population assessment of the great whales : case of the New Zealand southern right whale
E.C. was supported by a fellowship from the Tertiary Education Commission. Accurate estimation of historical abundance provides an essential baseline for judging the recovery of the great whales. This is particularly challenging for whales hunted prior to twentieth century modern whaling, as populat...
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ftstandrewserep:oai:research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk:10023/8429 2023-07-02T03:33:46+02:00 An integrated approach to historical population assessment of the great whales : case of the New Zealand southern right whale Jackson, Jennifer Carroll, Emma Louise Smith, Tim Zerbini, Alexandre Patenaude, Nathalie Baker, C. Scott University of St Andrews. School of Biology University of St Andrews. Sea Mammal Research Unit 2016-03-17T09:30:06Z 16 application/pdf http://hdl.handle.net/10023/8429 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.150669 eng eng Royal Society Open Science Jackson , J , Carroll , E L , Smith , T , Zerbini , A , Patenaude , N & Baker , C S 2016 , ' An integrated approach to historical population assessment of the great whales : case of the New Zealand southern right whale ' , Royal Society Open Science , vol. 3 , 150669 . https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.150669 2054-5703 PURE: 241567722 PURE UUID: 886421cd-9cec-4cc5-b0ba-d62b2b86639c Scopus: 84962174281 WOS: 000377969200019 http://hdl.handle.net/10023/8429 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.150669 © 2016 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. Whaling Historical abundance Southern right whale Bottleneck Recovery GC Oceanography GE Environmental Sciences DAS GC GE Journal article 2016 ftstandrewserep https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.150669 2023-06-13T18:27:19Z E.C. was supported by a fellowship from the Tertiary Education Commission. Accurate estimation of historical abundance provides an essential baseline for judging the recovery of the great whales. This is particularly challenging for whales hunted prior to twentieth century modern whaling, as population-level catch records are often incomplete. Assessments of whale recovery using pre-modern exploitation indices are therefore rare, despite the intensive, global nature of nineteenth century whaling. Right whales (Eubalaena spp.) were particularly exploited: slow swimmers with strong fidelity to sheltered calving bays, the species made predictable and easy targets. Here, we present the first integrated population-level assessment of the whaling impact and pre-exploitation abundance of a right whale, the New Zealand southern right whale (E. australis). In this assessment, we use a Bayesian population dynamics model integrating multiple data sources: nineteenth century catches, genetic constraints on bottleneck size and individual sightings histories informing abundance and trend. Different catch allocation scenarios are explored to account for uncertainty in the population's offshore distribution. From a pre-exploitation abundance of 28 800–47 100 whales, nineteenth century hunting reduced the population to approximately 30–40 mature females between 1914 and 1926. Today, it stands at less than 12% of pre-exploitation abundance. Despite the challenges of reconstructing historical catches and population boundaries, conservation efforts of historically exploited species benefit from targets for ecological restoration. Publisher PDF Peer reviewed Article in Journal/Newspaper Southern Right Whale University of St Andrews: Digital Research Repository New Zealand Royal Society Open Science 3 3 150669 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
University of St Andrews: Digital Research Repository |
op_collection_id |
ftstandrewserep |
language |
English |
topic |
Whaling Historical abundance Southern right whale Bottleneck Recovery GC Oceanography GE Environmental Sciences DAS GC GE |
spellingShingle |
Whaling Historical abundance Southern right whale Bottleneck Recovery GC Oceanography GE Environmental Sciences DAS GC GE Jackson, Jennifer Carroll, Emma Louise Smith, Tim Zerbini, Alexandre Patenaude, Nathalie Baker, C. Scott An integrated approach to historical population assessment of the great whales : case of the New Zealand southern right whale |
topic_facet |
Whaling Historical abundance Southern right whale Bottleneck Recovery GC Oceanography GE Environmental Sciences DAS GC GE |
description |
E.C. was supported by a fellowship from the Tertiary Education Commission. Accurate estimation of historical abundance provides an essential baseline for judging the recovery of the great whales. This is particularly challenging for whales hunted prior to twentieth century modern whaling, as population-level catch records are often incomplete. Assessments of whale recovery using pre-modern exploitation indices are therefore rare, despite the intensive, global nature of nineteenth century whaling. Right whales (Eubalaena spp.) were particularly exploited: slow swimmers with strong fidelity to sheltered calving bays, the species made predictable and easy targets. Here, we present the first integrated population-level assessment of the whaling impact and pre-exploitation abundance of a right whale, the New Zealand southern right whale (E. australis). In this assessment, we use a Bayesian population dynamics model integrating multiple data sources: nineteenth century catches, genetic constraints on bottleneck size and individual sightings histories informing abundance and trend. Different catch allocation scenarios are explored to account for uncertainty in the population's offshore distribution. From a pre-exploitation abundance of 28 800–47 100 whales, nineteenth century hunting reduced the population to approximately 30–40 mature females between 1914 and 1926. Today, it stands at less than 12% of pre-exploitation abundance. Despite the challenges of reconstructing historical catches and population boundaries, conservation efforts of historically exploited species benefit from targets for ecological restoration. Publisher PDF Peer reviewed |
author2 |
University of St Andrews. School of Biology University of St Andrews. Sea Mammal Research Unit |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Jackson, Jennifer Carroll, Emma Louise Smith, Tim Zerbini, Alexandre Patenaude, Nathalie Baker, C. Scott |
author_facet |
Jackson, Jennifer Carroll, Emma Louise Smith, Tim Zerbini, Alexandre Patenaude, Nathalie Baker, C. Scott |
author_sort |
Jackson, Jennifer |
title |
An integrated approach to historical population assessment of the great whales : case of the New Zealand southern right whale |
title_short |
An integrated approach to historical population assessment of the great whales : case of the New Zealand southern right whale |
title_full |
An integrated approach to historical population assessment of the great whales : case of the New Zealand southern right whale |
title_fullStr |
An integrated approach to historical population assessment of the great whales : case of the New Zealand southern right whale |
title_full_unstemmed |
An integrated approach to historical population assessment of the great whales : case of the New Zealand southern right whale |
title_sort |
integrated approach to historical population assessment of the great whales : case of the new zealand southern right whale |
publishDate |
2016 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/8429 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.150669 |
geographic |
New Zealand |
geographic_facet |
New Zealand |
genre |
Southern Right Whale |
genre_facet |
Southern Right Whale |
op_relation |
Royal Society Open Science Jackson , J , Carroll , E L , Smith , T , Zerbini , A , Patenaude , N & Baker , C S 2016 , ' An integrated approach to historical population assessment of the great whales : case of the New Zealand southern right whale ' , Royal Society Open Science , vol. 3 , 150669 . https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.150669 2054-5703 PURE: 241567722 PURE UUID: 886421cd-9cec-4cc5-b0ba-d62b2b86639c Scopus: 84962174281 WOS: 000377969200019 http://hdl.handle.net/10023/8429 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.150669 |
op_rights |
© 2016 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.150669 |
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Royal Society Open Science |
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3 |
container_issue |
3 |
container_start_page |
150669 |
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