Habitat-based cetacean density models for the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.

ABSTRACT: Cetaceans are protected worldwide but vulnerable to incidental harm from an expanding array of human activities at sea. Managing potential hazards to these highly-mobile populations increasingly requires a detailed understanding of their seasonal distributions and habitats. Pursuant to the urgent need for this knowledge for the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, we integrated 23 years of aerial and shipboard cetacean surveys, linked them to environmental covariates obtained from remote sensing and ocean models, and built habitat-based density models for 26 species and 3 multi-species guilds using distance sampling methodology. In the Atlantic, for 11 well-known species, model predictions resembled seasonal movement patterns previously suggested in the literature. For these we produced month

SUBMITTER: Roberts JJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4776172 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature