Estimated population size of two South American sea lion male haulouts from the northern coast of Argentina

Abstract

Knowledge of the real size of any wild population is an essential tool to take management and conservation measures and even more so when the population studied may have potential conflicts with humans. Because of this, the objective of this study was to estimate the population size of two South American sea lion male haul-outs using mark-resighting techniques. The results showed that on average, the estimated total number of animals tripled the number of animals recorded by direct counting. These findings demonstrate that it is necessary to continue researching population estimate methods to apply when taking conservation measures in the future.