2024 Results Of Steller Sea Lion Surveys In Alaska
February 20, 2025
The Alaska Fisheries Science Center’s Marine Mammal Laboratory conducts annual crewed aircraft and vessel surveys to known terrestrial Steller sea lion rookery and haulout sites in Alaska to collect visual counts and high-resolution imagery.
In 2024, Marine Mammal Laboratory focused effort on the western distinct population segment in Alaska, where the vessel-based team surveyed in the western and central Aleutian Islands regions while the crewed aircraft team surveyed the Gulf of Alaska regions (except for Southeast Alaska) for the first time since 2021.
We collected counts from 148 sites, totaling 22,082 non-pups and 7,017 pups. We used agTrend (R package) to model all raw count data through 2024 to estimate modeled counts (as an index of abundance) and annual rates of change since 2009. The estimated model count for the western DPS of Alaska was 39,774 non-pups and 12,953 pups.