Abstract
The area near the Deepwater Horizon incident was abundant with a variety of marine mammals, including endangered sperm whales and beaked whales. Our group, the Littoral Acoustic Demonstration Center (LADC), is in a unique position to assess short‐term and long‐term environmental impacts on marine mammal species in the immediate area of the oil spill source. LADC possesses multiple‐year passive acoustic data in the vicinity of the oil spill, including an extensive 9‐day visual and acoustic survey of marine mammals and the first recordings of the Gulf of Mexico beaked whales made in July 2007 just 9 miles from the Deepwater Horizon location. The previous recordings provide a baseline which, when combined with new measurements, can give important indicators of changes in the populations in response to the disaster. The paper reviews available population density estimation models based on acoustic recordings as applied to the LADC data. The baseline density estimations from acoustic data for sperm and beaked whales in the vicinity of the incident are presented and compared to available data derived from visual surveys.
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