Abstract
Bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetusL., 1758) of the Eastern Canada-West Greenland population have been hunted by Inuit for millennia. Significant commercial harvests, conducted by European and American whalers for about 400 years, ended ca. 1915. A small co-managed subsistence harvest from this population has occurred inconsistently in Canada and Greenland, since 1996 and 2009, respectively. Since near extirpation from commercial whaling, population size has increased and the Inuit subsistence hunt now requires a harvest management framework that incorporates knowledge of abundance trends, population dynamics, and carrying capacity. Here, we use a model estimate of pre-commercial exploitation abundance to approximate carrying capacity and develop a management framework with reference points and corresponding stock status zones. When applied to recent abundance estimates, our framework indicates that the population is likely within the healthy (N50–N70) zone. Thus, an appropriate management objective is to support continued population increase, with concurrent marginal harvesting, while maintaining the population level above the target reference point (N70) of ca 12,000 whales. However, there remains large uncertainty about current population size and growth rate. The resulting data gaps require a plan for future research to monitor this population in the context of climate changes.
Highlights
Sound wildlife management is based on clearly defined objectives and prioritized actions that can incorporate new stock assessment information as it becomes available
The trend in abundance estimated by the deterministic model (Rmax is 3.8–4.0 and the struck and lost factor is 1.10–1.15) followed the catch history data and provided a reasonable precommercial whaling estimate of ca. 18,500 whales that could be used to develop a Precautionary Approach (PA) framework (Figure 2A)
To inform the PA framework, we identified the transition between different abundance zones and their corresponding management objectives
Summary
Sound wildlife management is based on clearly defined objectives and prioritized actions that can incorporate new stock assessment information as it becomes available. The development of a harvest management framework is of importance to whale management in Canada where domestic legislation (e.g., Fisheries Act, Oceans Act, and Species at Risk Act) outlines the use of a PA framework with conservation reference limits (Hammill and Stenson, 2007) This approach was developed recognizing that fishery management requires clear decision-making rules to guide managers under cases of scientific uncertainty (Butterworth and Punt, 1999). ECWG bowhead population abundance trends were modeled over the past 400+ years to estimate an historical population level of bowhead whales (i.e., pre-commercial exploitation or carrying capacity)
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