This report updates abundance estimates for blue and humpback whales through 2024 and summarizes the survey and photo-ID effort for 2022 to 2024 that generated the data for these most recent estimates. This work was conducted with support from a number of sources:
1. a subaward from WDFW under the NOAA Section 6 program to conduct small boat surveys, photographic identifications, sample collections, and tag deployments on endangered large whales to inform risks from entanglements and ship strikes,
2. a project to inform decisions on the California commercial Dungeness crab fishery funded by the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission and the California Ocean Protection Council,
3. work off Oregon and northern California supported through a subaward from Oregon State University to inform offshore alternative energy development, and
4. support from Southwest Fisheries Science Center to estimate blue whale abundance using new data and models.
We summarize some of the work and results in the sections that follow but additional detail can be found in more than 40 publications in scientific journals that have come out during the project period that are based at least in part on some of the work conducted under this project (see full list of these is included at the end of this report).
Citation:
Calambokidis, J., and J. Barlow. 2025. Report on Abundance Estimates for Blue and Humpback Whales Along the U.S. West Coast Extended to 2022 to 2024. Report submitted to the NOAA Scientific Review Group and Take Reduction Team. 18 pp.
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