NESP MB Project A13: Southern Right Whale Abundance and Mixing, 2018-2020

A 2018-2020 project aggregated existing photo-identification datasets, including the Australian Right Whale Photo-Identification Catalogue (ARWPIC), to assess southern right whale population dynamics. The project estimated total Australian population abundance and investigated spatial connectivity between breeding areas along the eastern, southern, and western coasts. It was conducted by the NESP Marine Biodiversity Hub and contributed to conservation planning for the species.

Use Cases

• Estimate population abundance trends based on aggregated photo-identification records.
• Analyze spatial connectivity and mixing between regional whale populations based on breeding area data.
• Support conservation management plan evaluations for southern right whales.
• Assess future data collection needs for ongoing whale monitoring programs.

Strengths

• Project aggregated multiple existing photo-identification datasets, including the national ARWPIC catalogue.
• Research contributed directly to the Conservation Management Plan for southern right whales.
• Analysis covered breeding areas along the eastern, southern, and western coasts of Australia.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

NESP Marine Biodiversity Hub, Australian Ocean Data Network

Collection Method

Aggregation and analysis of existing photo-identification datasets.

Time Range

2018-2020

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-05 02:50:58.968885; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Australian and New Zealand regions, including eastern, southern, and western Australian coasts.