Several scientific institutions participate in the project, involving an Advisory Board with a broad panel of experts who provide the knowledge and the expertise to ensure the effectiveness of the activities and the related scientific output.
The CetAMBICion project is carrying out a series of scientific-technical actions to establish the abundance and density of cetaceans in the Bay of Biscay based on information from the three partner countries of the project, as well as to standardise methodologies for monitoring these species, both their populations and incidental catches. All of this with the aim of implementing and evaluating measures to mitigate the incidental catches that threaten the survival of these marine mammal species.
Methodology for data processing and analysis
In this line, all available data on cetacean monitoring in the Bay of Biscay have been analysed, combined and the abundance and distribution of these species have been estimated, developing a methodological framework and a model that is replicable over time and with new data.
As a result, AMBIdsm has been developed, an R package that aims to propose a common workflow that facilitates the comparable and reproducible assessment of the abundance and distribution of marine mammal species. The functions included in this package allow:
- Merge and analyse data from different surveys.
- Build distance sampling models and estimate ESW.
- Build range surface models and estimate species abundance and distribution.
- Visualise density maps.
