Working Group on Marine Mammal Ecology (WGMME)

Abstract

162 pages.-- This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0)The Working Group on Marine Mammal Ecology met in 2021 to address new information on marine mammal ecology relevant to management. Two terms of references were standing ToRs; under the first of these, ToR A, new and updated information on seal and cetacean population abundance, population/stock structure, manage-ment frameworks as well as anthropogenic threats to individual health and population status were reviewed along with findings on threats to marine mammals such as bycatch, pollution, marine debris and noise. ToR B is a cooperation with WGBIODIV to review species-specific for-aging distributions (considering horizontal and vertical dimensions depending on data availa-bility) and to estimate consumption by marine mammal species representative in case study ar-eas. ToR C was implemented to review aspects of marine mammal fishery interactions not cov-ered by ICES WGBYC. ToR D is the second standing ToR and concerns updating the WGMME seal database, which was updated with the latest dataN