Estimating the abundance of the critically endangered Baltic Proper harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) population using passive acoustic monitoring
DOI10.5281/zenodo.6639075Zenodo6639075MaRDI QIDQ6706894FDOQ6706894
Dataset published at Zenodo repository.
Olli Loisa, Anders Galatius, Monika Kosecka, Jussi Laaksonlaita, Jakob Tougaard, Katharina Brundiers, Penina Blankett, Line A. Kyhn, Martin Jabbusch, Julia Carlström, Alejandro Acevedo-Gutierrez, Ida Carlén, Bartłomiej Arciszewski, Sami Lyytinen, Radomil Koza, Daniel Wennerberg, Andrew Wright, Jonas Teilmann, Iwona Pawliczka, Nick Tregenza, Mats Amundin, Jens Koblitz, Jussi Niemi, Cinthia Tiberi Ljungqvist, Anja Gallus, Aleksej Šaškov, Michael Dähne, Len Thomas, Louise Burt, Harald Benke, Jamie MacAulay, Ivar Jüssi, Signe Sveegaard
Publication date: 13 June 2022
Knowing the abundance of a population is a crucial component to assess its conservation status and develop effective conservation plans. For most cetaceans, abundance estimation is difficult given their cryptic and mobile nature, especially when the population is small and has a transnational distribution. In the Baltic Sea, the number of harbour porpoises (Phocoena phocoena) has collapsed since the mid-20th century and the Baltic Proper harbour porpoise is listed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN and HELCOM; however, its abundance remains unknown. Here, one of the largest ever passive acoustic monitoring studies was carried out by eight Baltic Sea nations to estimate the abundance of the Baltic Proper harbour porpoise for the first time. By logging porpoise echolocation signals at 298 stations during May 2011-April 2013, calibrating the loggers' spatial detection performance at sea, and measuring the click rate of tagged individuals, we estimated an abundance of 71-1,105 individuals (95% CI, point estimate 491) during May-October within the population's proposed management border. The small abundance estimate strongly supports that the Baltic Proper harbour porpoise is facing an extremely high risk of extinction, and highlights the need for immediate and efficient conservation actions through international cooperation. It also provides a starting point in monitoring the trend of the population abundance to evaluate the effectiveness of management measures and determine its interactions with the larger neighbouring Belt Sea population. Further, we offer evidence that design-based passive acoustic monitoring can generate reliable estimates of the abundance of rare and cryptic animal populations across large spatial scales.
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