AFSC/NMML: North Pacific Right Whale Vessel Surveys in the Southeastern Bering Sea, 2007 - 2011

The North Pacific right whale (NPRW) was heavily hunted between the 17th and the 20th centuries. Protection was supposedly afforded by international treaties in the 1930s and 1940s, but the illegal capture of hundreds of individuals by the Soviet Union, primarily in the 1960s drastically impacted the recovery of the species. Currently, only a small remnant of this population (estimated at approximately 30 individuals) inhabits the southeastern Bering Sea (SEBS). There is an increasing body of evidence suggesting that the middle shelf domain constitutes the primary habitat of NPRWs in the SEBS during the summer. Despite substantial observation effort from various sources in some other areas, the only region in the Bering Sea where NPRWs have been consistently seen is the middle shelf. Vessel surveys were conducted in the summers of 2007 - 2011 in the EBS mostly within the NPRW critical habitat boundary (located on the middle shelf of the SEBS). A total of eight NPRW individuals were identified from photographs taken during the survey.

This work was prompted by the need for better data to assess the potential impact of oil and gas development in the North Aleutian Basin (NAB) area. The inter-agency (IA) study was a multi-year project which featured multi-disciplinary investigations of right whale occurrence, movements and feeding ecology. The overall goal of the IA study was to facilitate any development of future oil and gas-related mitigation by assessing the distribution, occurrence and habitat use of NPRW in the SEBS (NAB lease sale area and adjacent waters). The general objectives of the visual line-transect portion of the study were as follows: 1) To assess distribution of NPRWs in the SEBS, with emphasis on the NPRW Critical Habitat and NAB area in the Bering Sea, 2) To study the habitat-use and site fidelity of NPRW using ship-based visual surveys, and 3) To collect photo-identification data and biopsy samples from individual whales to investigate population structure, improve estimates of abundance, determine sex, pollutant loads, and diet.

Loaded by FGDC Metadata Uploader, batch 7156, 10-01-2015 16:06

The following FGDC sections are not currently supported in InPort, but were preserved and will be included in the FGDC export:

- Taxonomy (FGDC:taxonomy)

- Spatial Reference Information (FGDC:spref),

- Spatial Data Organization Information (FGDC:spdoinfo)

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Data is available at http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/iso?id=gov.noaa.nodc:0133935.

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of NOAA/NMFS/AFSC as the source from which these data were obtained in any publications and/or other representations of these data is suggested.

Excel

The fields SIGHTDECLAT, SIGHTDECLONG, PERPDIST, AND DISTDOWNTRACK were not calculated in 2007 and 2008.

Survey data collected with Wincruz (Windows Real Time Sighting-Effort Event Logger developed by Robert Holland at Southwest Fisheries Science Center).

Accuracy was ensured by reviewing and editing the data in the field on a daily basis. Post cruise processing included data extraction and error checking using customized software (Paul Wade, National Marine Mammal Laboratory). Tracklines and sightings were plotted in ArcMap to check for accuracy.

IT Security and Contingency Plan for the system establishes procedures and applies to the functions, operations, and resources necessary to recover and restore data as hosted in the Western Regional Support Center in Seattle, Washington, following a disruption.