It is important to realize the number that you get is an estimate and not the actual number of whales out there. There are many factors that can skew your calculations to either overestimate or underestimate. These may include how accurately you estimate distances, if you missed animals that were very close to the boat (as we assume you will detect all of those whales), the distribution of animals over the area, how far you traveled over the area, the speed of the boat, etc. This can happen on a real survey, but especially in our virtual ocean (which is still a work in progress). Most of your estimates will likely be significantly higher than the actual whales reported at the end of the game. This method assumes that animals are equally distributed over the landscape, meaning the same number of whales would be close to the boat as you would find far away from the boat (i.e. animals are not clumped together). In previous versions of the simulation, students were having difficulty finding whales in the assessment mode. To combat that problem, programmers brought more humpback whales close to the boat so that they could be easily found. This