Cetacean Abundance in the US Northwestern Atlantic Ocean: Summer 2016

This document focuses on abundance estimates of cetaceans detected only during the NEFSC surveys that covered waters from North Carolina to Maine, from the shore to the Gulf Stream, which is about 370 km (200 nmi) offshore. In a study area of 425,192 km2 the ship and plane surveyed 11,636 km of track lines. To estimate abundance, data collected with the two-independent-team method were analyzed by using mark-recapture distance sampling to account for perception bias and by using dive time patterns to account for availability bias.