Techniques for determining marine mammal densities

Determining marine mammal densities is a complex problem that has been ongoing for many decades. Modern approaches use a combination of sophisticated acoustic monitoring and highly trained visual observers from both ships and aircraft. New camera systems with automatic detection algorithms offer the option to do quantitative airborne surveys safely and quickly. This paper presents a discussion on the various methods of calculating marine mammal densities and demonstrates how all these methods can work together to present quantitative density measurements.