Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Dalhousie University, 6299 South Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 4R2, Canada.
JASCO Applied Sciences, 32 Troop Avenue, Suite 202, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia B3B 1Z1, Canada.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2021 Nov;150(5):3569. doi: 10.1121/10.0007063.
Estimates of abundance and their changes through time are key elements of marine mammal conservation and management. Absolute marine mammal abundance in a region of the open ocean is often difficult to attain. However, methods of estimating their abundance based on passive acoustic recordings are becoming increasingly employed. This study shows that passive acoustic monitoring of North Atlantic minke whales with a single hydrophone provides sufficient information to estimate relative population abundance. An automated detector was developed for minke whale pulse trains and an approach for converting its output into a relative abundance index is proposed by accounting for detectability as well as false positives and negatives. To demonstrate this technique, a 2 y dataset from the seven sites of the Atlantic Deepwater Ecosystem Observatory Network project on the U.S. east coast was analyzed. Resulting relative abundance indices confirm pulse train-calling minke whale presence in the deep waters of the outer continental shelf. The minkes are present December through April annually with the highest abundance near the site offshore of Savannah, Georgia.
丰度估计及其随时间的变化是海洋哺乳动物保护和管理的关键要素。开阔海域某一地区的海洋哺乳动物绝对丰度通常难以获得。然而，基于被动声学记录来估计其丰度的方法正越来越多地被采用。本研究表明，使用单个水听器对北大西洋小须鲸进行被动声学监测，可以提供足够的信息来估计相对种群丰度。为此开发了一种用于小须鲸脉冲串的自动探测器，并提出了一种方法，通过考虑可检测性以及假阳性和假阴性，将其输出转换为相对丰度指数。为了演示该技术，分析了美国东海岸大西洋深海生态系统观测站网络项目七个站点的 2 年数据集。得到的相对丰度指数证实了在大陆架外深水区存在脉冲串呼叫小须鲸。小须鲸每年 12 月至 4 月在那里出现，在佐治亚州萨凡纳外海附近的站点处数量最多。
