Trends in selected US Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico marine mammal stock assessments-2014

Under the 1994 amendments of the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) were required to generate stock assessment reports (SARs) for all marine mammal stocks in waters within the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). The first reports for the Atlantic (includes the Gulf of Mexico) were published in July 1995 (Blaylock et al. 1995). The MMPA requires NMFS and USFWS to review these reports annually for strategic stocks of marine mammals and at least every 3 years for stocks determined to be non-strategic. Included in this report as appendices are: 1) a summary of serious injury/mortality estimates of marine mammals in observed U.S. fisheries (Appendix I), 2) a summary of NMFS records of large whale human-caused serious injury and mortality (Appendix II), 3) detailed fisheries information (Appendix III), 4) summary tables of abundance estimates generated over recent years and the surveys from which they are derived (Appendix IV), and a list of reports not updated in the current year (Appendix V). Table 1 contains a summary, by species, of the information included in the stock assessments, and also indicates those that have been revised since the 2013 publication. Most of the changes incorporate new information into sections on population size and/or mortality estimates. A total of 30 of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico stock assessment reports were revised for 2014. The revised SARs include 12 strategic and 18 non-strategic stocks.