Decadal Assessment of Sperm Whale Site-Specific Abundance Trends in the Northern Gulf of Mexico Using Passive Acoustic Data

摘要: Passive acoustic monitoring has been successfully used to study deep-diving marine mammal populations. To assess regional population trends of sperm whales in the northern Gulf Mexico (GoM), including impacts Deepwater Horizon platform oil spill 2010, Littoral Acoustic Demonstration Center-Gulf Ecological Monitoring and Modeling (LADC-GEMM) consortium collected broadband data Mississippi Valley/Canyon area between 2007 2017 using bottom-anchored moorings. These allow inference short-term long-term variations site-specific abundances derived from their activity. A comparison is made at specific sites different years before after by estimating abundance density. The results show that were present region throughout entire period. habitat preference shift was observed for 2010 with higher activities farther away site. 2015 shows overall did not recover pre-spill levels. indicate spatially distributed critical characterizing whale changes understanding how environmental stressors impact use whales.