2025_programme: Density estimates of fin whales across the Wake Island and Diego Garcia CTBTO sites

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  • Day: June 17, Tuesday
      Location / Time: A. TERPSIHORI at 09:50 - 10:10
  • Last minutes changes: -
  • Session: 08a. Bioacoustics and Soundscape
    Organiser(s): Jennifer Miksis-Olds, Giacomo Giorli
    Chairperson(s): Jennifer Miksis-Olds, Giacomo Giorli
  • Lecture: Density estimates of fin whales across the Wake Island and Diego Garcia CTBTO sites [Invited]
    Paper ID: 2347
    Author(s): Kerri D. Seger, John K. Boyle, David K. Mellinger, Kevin D. Heaney, Jennifer L. Miksis-Olds, Danielle Harris
    Presenter: Kerri Seger
    Abstract: The “Combining global OBS and CTBTO recordings to estimate abundance and density of fin and blue whales”, or CORTADO, project has used data from two bottom-sensor types to implement a suite of methods for estimating density of fin and blue whales. Previous studies have demonstrated the utility of Ocean Bottom Seismometers (OBS) and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) hydroacoustic data, but such projects tended to use in-house coding packages that were not made publicly available. The CORTADO project is primarily focused on refining past scripts used in density estimation methods so they could be openly accessible by the wider research community. This focus has resulted in a set of software tools and training materials that will be detailed in this talk. A secondary CORTADO goal was to test three biological questions about fin whale density and distribution to exemplify the software tools as part of a case study. This talk will demonstrate the software package as used for subsets of data from the CTBTO sensors at Wake Island and Diego Garcia sites in October through December, 2007. The biological case studies used to elucidate the density estimation methods and scripts include comparisons of densities between North and South triads at the Wake and Diego sites, and temporal trends. Caveats to the case study results include assumptions about the propagation environments at each sensor as well as fin whale ecology. Therefore, ways that these density methods and scripts could be further refined by future users will be detailed.
  • Corresponding author: Dr Kerri Seger
    Affiliation: re1 LLC
    Country: United States

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