Guidelines for Assessing Marine Mammal Stocks: Report of the GAMMSIII Workshop, February 15 –18, 2011, La Jolla, California

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service(USFWS)(collectively, the Agencies) are obliged under Section 117 of the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) to prepare Stock Assessment Reports(Reports) for marine mammal stocks within U.S. waters. The MMPA provides only general guidance on assessment methods and on the content of the Reports. As a result, the Agencies have held a series of workshops since 1994 to develop guidelines that may be consistently applied nationally to marine mammal stock assessments. These guidelines underlie NMFS and USFWS policy for implementing provisions of MMPA section 117.