Tiny ocean life helps scientists estimate whale prevalence off the California coast

A new approach to better assessing whale population data has emerged, led by a research team of marine biologists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and statisticians from Cal Poly. Scientists typically monitor whale presence through a variety of traditional methods such as visual surveys, photo identification, acoustic monitoring, satellite imagery, and increasingly, genomic methods. But monitoring can be challenging due to a wide-ranging migration area and intermittent surface pop-ups, among other difficulties.