Citation:

j.1751-8369.2009.00142.x

Name: (Table 1) Beluga (Delphinapterus leucas) density and abundance, and pod characteristics in west Greenland waters
Published: 2010
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

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Abstract:

An aerial survey was conducted to estimate the abundance of belugas (Delphinapterus leucas) on their wintering ground in West Greenland in March-April 2006 and 2008. The survey was conducted as a double platform aerial line transect survey, and sampled approximately 17% of the total survey area of ca. 125 000 km**2. The abundance of belugas was 10 595 (95% confidence interval 4904-24 650). The largest abundance was found at the northern part of Store Hellefiske Bank, at the eastern edge of the Baffin Bay pack ice, a pattern similar to that found in eight systematic surveys conducted since 1981. A clear relationship between decreasing sea-ice cover and increasing offshore distance of beluga sightings was established from all previous surveys, suggesting that belugas expand their distribution westward as new areas on the banks of West Greenland open up earlier in spring with reduced sea-ice coverage or early annual ice recession. This is in contrast to the relatively confined distribution of belugas near the coast in limited open areas in the early 1980s, when sea-ice cover was greater. However, the effects of the changes in coastal availability of belugas can also be observed with the correlation between catches from the local Inuit hunt and sea-ice cover, where the catches increased significantly with increasing sea-ice coverage during the period 1954-2006. These results, based on nearly 30 years of dedicated survey effort, are among the first available evidence showing a shift in distribution of an Arctic cetacean in response to changes in sea-ice coverage.

Project(s):

International Polar Year (2007-2008) (IPY)

Coverage:

Median Latitude: 70.500000 * Median Longitude: -56.250000 * South-bound Latitude: 67.000000 * West-bound Longitude: -57.500000 * North-bound Latitude: 74.000000 * East-bound Longitude: -55.000000

Date/Time Start: 2006-03-21T00:00:00 * Date/Time End: 2006-04-19T00:00:00

Event(s):

W_Greenland_area2 * Latitude Start: 74.000000 * Longitude Start: -57.500000 * Latitude End: 67.000000 * Longitude End: -55.000000 * Location: West Greenland * Method/Device: Whale watching (WHW)

Comment:

The total abundance of belugas is corrected for an availability bias of 0.43 (coefficient of variation (CV) = 0.09). Data extracted in the frame of a joint ICSTI/PANGAEA IPY effort, see http://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.150150

Parameter(s):

#	Name	Short Name	Unit	Principal Investigator	Comment
1	Area/locality	Area		Heide-Jørgensen, Mads Peter	stratum
2	Area	Area	km²	Heide-Jørgensen, Mads Peter
3	Sampling date	Sampling date		Heide-Jørgensen, Mads Peter	survey
4	DATE/TIME	Date/Time			Geocode
5	Date/time end	Date/time end		Heide-Jørgensen, Mads Peter
6	Number	No		Heide-Jørgensen, Mads Peter	of transects
7	Length of transect	Length	m	Heide-Jørgensen, Mads Peter
8	Number of observations	NOBS	#	Heide-Jørgensen, Mads Peter	detections
9	Ratio	Ratio		Heide-Jørgensen, Mads Peter	encounter rate, NOBS/transect length
10	Delphinapterus leucas, density of pods	D. leucas pod dens	#/km²	Heide-Jørgensen, Mads Peter	corrected abundance/km**2
11	Coefficient	Coeff		Heide-Jørgensen, Mads Peter	CV for density of pods
12	Delphinapterus leucas	D. leucas	#	Heide-Jørgensen, Mads Peter	abundance uncorrected for availability bias
13	Coefficient	Coeff		Heide-Jørgensen, Mads Peter	CV for uncorrected whale abundance
14	Delphinapterus leucas, density	D. leucas dens	#/km²	Heide-Jørgensen, Mads Peter	corrected abundance/km**2
15	Coefficient	Coeff		Heide-Jørgensen, Mads Peter	CV for density of whales
16	Delphinapterus leucas, number of pods	D. leucas no. of pods	#	Heide-Jørgensen, Mads Peter	abundance corrected for availability bias
17	Coefficient	Coeff		Heide-Jørgensen, Mads Peter	CV for corrected pod abundance
18	Delphinapterus leucas, pod size	D. leucas pod size		Heide-Jørgensen, Mads Peter
19	Coefficient	Coeff		Heide-Jørgensen, Mads Peter	CV for pod size
20	Delphinapterus leucas	D. leucas	#	Heide-Jørgensen, Mads Peter	abundance corrected for availability bias
21	Coefficient	Coeff		Heide-Jørgensen, Mads Peter	CV for corrected abundance

License:

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC-BY-3.0)

Size:

258 data points

Data

Download dataset as tab-delimited text — use the following character encoding:

1 Area (stratum)	2 Area [km²]	3 Sampling date (survey)	4 Date/Time	5 Date/time end	6 No (of transects)	7 Length [m]	8 NOBS [#] (detections)	9 Ratio (encounter rate, NOBS/transect...)	10 D. leucas pod dens [#/km²] (corrected abundance/km**2)	11 Coeff (CV for density of pods)	12 D. leucas [#] (abundance uncorrected for ava...)	13 Coeff (CV for uncorrected whale abun...)	14 D. leucas dens [#/km²] (corrected abundance/km**2)	15 Coeff (CV for density of whales)	16 D. leucas no. of pods [#] (abundance corrected for avail...)	17 Coeff (CV for corrected pod abundance)	18 D. leucas pod size	19 Coeff (CV for pod size)	20 D. leucas [#] (abundance corrected for avail...)	21 Coeff (CV for corrected abundance)
1	1496	11/4	2006-04-11		2	91320	1	0.0110	0.0384	1.01	25	1.01	0.0384	1.01	58	1.01	1.0	0.00	58	1.01
2	9669	24/3, 11/4, 15-16/4	2006-03-24	2006-04-16	12	1328550	18	0.0135	0.0498	0.31	361	0.33	0.0867	0.34	481	0.31	1.7	0.33	802	0.34
3	8613	23-24/3	2006-03-23	2006-03-24	10	836970	44	0.0526	0.1788	0.58	2651	0.77	0.7158	0.78	1540	0.58	4.0	0.93	5891	0.78
4	6376	1/4, 6-7/4	2006-04-01	2006-04-07	5	419380	0	0.0000	0.0000		0		0.0000		0		0.0		0
5	8041	7/4	2006-04-07		1	84190	0	0.0000	0.0000		0		0.0000		0		0.0		0
6	5935	1/4	2006-04-01		10	856530	0	0.0000	0.0000		0		0.0000		0		0.0		0
7	8205	21/3, 16-15/4	2006-03-21	2006-04-16	10	1075880	0	0.0000	0.0000		0		0.0000		0		0.0		0
9	5792	16-17/4	2006-04-16	2006-04-17	12	490980	1	0.0020	0.0065	1.04	50	1.04	0.0200	1.04	40	1.04	3.0	0.00	111	1.04
10	10779	17-18/4	2006-04-17	2006-04-18	6	522730	5	0.0096	0.0316	0.94	234	0.95	0.0505	0.95	340	0.94	1.6	0.08	520	0.95
12	3612	17-19/4	2006-04-17	2006-04-19	6	234130	6	0.0256	0.0842	0.69	302	0.68	0.1946	0.69	305	0.69	2.3	0.01	671	0.69
13	27544	9-10/4	2006-04-09	2006-04-10	18	2383840	27	0.0113	0.0414	0.43	1465	0.43	0.1237	0.44	1140	0.43	3.0	0.70	3256	0.44
14	14168	11, 15-16/4	2006-04-11	2006-04-16	12	1295620	9	0.0069	0.0244	0.56	211	0.59	0.0346	0.60	346	0.56	1.4	0.22	469	0.60
15	13256	18/4	2006-04-18		5	535580	0	0.0000	0.0000		0		0.0000		0		0.0		0
16	2148	19/4	2006-04-19		3	137470	0	0.0000	0.0000		0		0.0000		0		0.0		0
Total	125634		2006-03-21	2006-04-19	112	10673910	111	0.0108	0.0337	0.29	5298	0.42	0.0981	0.43	4249	0.29	2.9	0.20	11773	0.43