Two analyses of NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center survey data
2026-09-23
Two reports built on cetacean survey data from the NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center. They are meant to be read in order: the first maps what the public sighting archive can show, the second uses line-transect data to do what that archive cannot.
Where cetaceans were recorded across the Hawaiian Islands EEZ, month by month, from nine survey cruises between 2009 and 2017. An animated map over bathymetry, and an account of why a record of sightings without a record of effort can describe distribution but not abundance.
Line-transect data from the winter 2020 survey, reprocessed with PIFSC’s own software into 10 km segments, fitted with a detection function and a Tweedie GAM over depth and space, and predicted across the study area. The resulting abundance estimate is compared against the published design-based figure for the same survey.
Code and data sources for both are in the repository. Survey data collected by NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, Protected Species Division.