LONG-TERM GOALS

Our goal is to build an ecological modeling framework that facilitates understanding of the way in which at-sea condition and health of various species of marine mammals changes over time. This project will develop statistical tools to allow mathematical models of the population consequences of acoustic disturbance to be fitted to data from marine mammal populations. We will work closely with Phase II of the ONR PCAD Working Group, and will provide statistical support to that group. OBJECTIVES Our scientific objectives are to build a statistical framework for understanding the way in which at-sea health varies over time for (initially) three species of marine mammals: southern and northern elephant seals, and northern right whales. For elephant seals our objective is to describe – both for elephant seal biologists, and ecologists working on body condition – the steps necessary to fit the model from Schick et al. (2013b) to data. This will take the form of a manuscript that includes an appendix that describes how to fit the code to data and how to interpret results. In addition, we have fit the model to data from a set of post-breeding females for a PhD student in Mark Hindell’s lab. For right whales, our primary objective is to continually refine the model that provides spatially an