PRELIMINARY ESTIMATION OF PENGUIN BREEDING ABUNDANCE AT SPATIAL-SCALES OF RELEVANCE TO CCAMLR: INCORPORATING UNCERTAINTY IN COUNT DATA

One recommendation from the Predator Survey workshop was the undertaking of some immediate inter-sessional work to be reported to WG-EMM-08. The work to be undertaken included preliminary estimation of SSMU-specific gentoo and Adélie breeding abundance in Area 48, and similar analyses of east Antarctic data for Adélie penguins. It was recognised that the abundance estimates would not be corrected for availability (e.g. nest failure) and hence would to some extent be biased estimates of the breeding population, and would only account for uncertainty in the accuracy of the count data. However, the work was seen as useful in illustrating both the database of penguin count data compiled for the workshop, and the underlying basis of new estimation procedures presented to the workshop. At an SSMU level, uncertainty associated with accuracy or repeatability of the counts varied substantially between SSMUs (95% C.I. as a percent of the count ranged from 1.5% to 37.1%).