Sequential Estimation in Line Transect Surveys

This article considers using sequential procedures to determine the amount of survey effort required in a line transect survey in order to achieve a certain precision level in estimating the abundance of a biological population. Sequential procedures are constructed for both parametric and nonparametric animal abundance estimators. The criterion used to derive the stopping rules is the width of confidence intervals for the animal abundance. For each estimator considered, we develop stopping rules based on the asymptotic distributions and the bootstrap. A sequential analysis on an aerial survey of the southern bluefin tuna indicates substantial saving of survey effort can be made by employment of the proposed sequential procedures. This savings of survey effort is also observed in a simulation study designed to evaluate the empirical performance of the proposed sequential procedures.