Population densities of dolphins in the Northern Gulf of Mexico

Abstract

The Littoral Acoustic Demonstration Center–Gulf Ecological Monitoring and Modeling (LADC-GEMM) consortium collected underwater acoustic data in the northern Gulf of Mexico during the summer of 2015, returning to sites previously surveyed by LADC (2007, 2009, and 2010). Results presented here are produced using data recorded by the LADC-GEMM Environmental Acoustic Recording Systems (EARS) at the site closest to the BP oil spill, specifically for Rizzo, bottlenose, Clymene, and Pantropical-Spotted dolphins. Clustering and trained classifier techniques were used to isolate dolphin species. A population model developed by LADC-GEMM based on acoustic data collected from the EARS buoys is used to estimate the strength of delphinid recovery in the northern Gulf of Mexico after the BP oil spill. [This research was made possible by a grant from The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative. Data are publicly available through the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative Information & Data Cooperative (GRIIDC) at https://data.gulfresearchinitiative.org.]