The North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission
You are here:
Objectives - lised in order of priority
- To estimate absolute abundance of cetacean species in Northern North Atlantic waters to provide information that can be used (along with information on trends, see 2) in a management framework to recommend safe catch limits, both direct and indirect, for cetacean species which are subjected to aboriginal, direct or indirect catch in the Nordic areas.
- This will support the definition of a clear course of action to allow populations to recover to or maintain a favourable conservation status.
- To assess trends in distribution and abundance by comparison with the results of previous North Atlantic Sightings Surveys (NASS).
- To map summer distribution of as many cetacean species as possible, especially those of poorly known status such as blue, right, sperm and beaked whales, and other large marine species such as leather back turtles, in as large as possible an area of the Northern Atlantic (among others by conducting an acoustic survey parallel to the visual survey).
