Abstract
Quantifying injury to common bottlenose dolphins from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill using an age-, sex- and class-structured population model
Highlights
Field studies conducted to assess injury to nearshore common bottlenose dolphins Tursiops truncatus following the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill demonstrated poor health (Schwacke et al 2014), reproductive failure (Lane et al 2015, Kellar et al 2017, this Theme Section), and increased mortality that contributed to the largest and longest lasting cetacean Unusual Mortality Event (UME) on record in the northern Gulf of Mexico (Litz et al 2014)
We present an application of the model for a single stock (Barataria Bay Estuarine System Stock; see Vollmer & Rosel [2013] for a review of Gulf of Mexico dolphin stock structure), the same population modeling framework was used for the 2 coastal T. truncatus stocks and 3 other Bay, Sound and Estuary (BSE) stocks for which DWH-associated excess mortality was determined
A single run of the model involved sampling from the distribution of each input parameter, deterministically projecting the population state for 150 yr under a baseline scenario to predict what the trajectory would have been if the DWH spill had not happened, paired with a trajectory for the same number of years assuming reduced survival and reduced fecundity in dolphins that were present in the population at the time of the spill
Summary
Field studies conducted to assess injury to nearshore common bottlenose dolphins Tursiops truncatus following the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill demonstrated poor health (Schwacke et al 2014), reproductive failure (Lane et al 2015, Kellar et al 2017, this Theme Section), and increased mortality that contributed to the largest and longest lasting cetacean Unusual Mortality Event (UME) on record in the northern Gulf of Mexico (Litz et al 2014). We describe a population modeling framework with a DD fecundity function that drives recovery following losses associated with the DWH oil spill in order to quantify the expected long-term population impacts on T. truncatus stocks.
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