Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1992, Qupperneq 8

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THE INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH . . .
Department of Animal Biology, Univers-
ity of Barcelona, Spain.
Organochlorine contamination.
Variation pattem according to bio-
logical parameters.
Marine Research Institute (MRI) -
Reykjavík, Iceland.
Distribution and abundance of pilot
whales in the North East Atlantic.
More recently, a new institute joined the
project:
Northeast Fisheries Center, NOAA,
NMFS - Woods Hole, USA.
Use of age-structured and indivi-
ual-based population models to
estimate the effect of mortality
due to harvesting.
The intensive sampling period was initiated
in July 1986 and lasted for two years. The
scientists and the staff of the Faroese
Natural History Museum kept it going con-
tinuously during this period, assisted most-
ly during the summer by some of the other
biologists involved. In this two year-peri-
od, 47 notifications of pilot whale schools
were recorded, 43 were followed by actual
landings, and of these, 40 schools, with a
total of 3,470 whales, were systematically
examined.
Finally, besides the main purpose of
examining the status of the exploited popu-
lation(s), this research programme made
more fundamental studies possible, partic-
ularly because of
- 1) the year-round sampling,
- 2) the large number of animals sam-
pled,
- 3) the fact that results from different
fields of the investigations are based on
data collected from the same whales,
allowing a strict analysis of the correlations
existing between the different factors.
Main results obtained to date
Distribution and abundance
In the summers of 1987 and 1989 the Faroe
Islands took part in the North Atlantic
Sightings Surveys (NASS) to assess the
distribution and abundance of pilot whales
in particular in the North East Atlantic. The
Faroese and Icelandic data on pilot whales
were analysed together.
In 1987, one Faroese and three Icelandic
vessels surveyed an area of which the main
part was bounded by 8°E and 41 °W longi-
tude and 61°N and 68°N latitude with two
extensions north and south between the
longitudes 8°W and 20°W. The area to the
southeast, i.e. southwest of the Faroes, had
by far the greatest occurrence of pilot
whales and the species seemed to be scarce
in the northemmost regions of the northeast
Atlantic.
In 1989, the area was expanded and one
Faroese and four Icelandic vessels sur-
veyed an area bounded by 06°W and 40°W
longitude and 67°N and 50°N latitude.
An estimate of 104,000 (cv=0.3) pilot
whales was made from NASS-87 for the
surveyed area. A new analysis of pilot
whale abundance was carried out, includ-
ing Icelandic and Faroese data from NASS-
87 and NASS-89, as well as Spanish data