NEFSC Harbor Porpoise 1991
National Marine Fisheries Service

National Marine Fisheries Service

The ship survey was performed from 22 July 1991 to 30 August 1991 to estimate the abundance and spatial distribution of harbor porpoises. The study area, covering approximately 13,300 nm , was from Port Clyde, ME to 2 St. John, New Brunswick over to the Nova Scotian coast, up to Liverpool, Nova Scotia.

PRIMARY OBJECTIVES 1) Estimate the abundance of harbor porpoises in the Gulf of Maine - Bay of Fundy - Nova Scotia area. 2) Investigate if there are any spatial distribution patterns of the harbor porpoises, and if those patterns are correlated with water depth or harbor porpoise group size. SECONDARY OBJECTIVES 1) Estimate the abundance and spatial distribution of other cetaceans. 2) Determine if harbor porpoise avoid this ship, and if so, at what distance. 3) Determine if there is a spatial distribution pattern of mother-calf pairs of harbor porpoise. 4) Compare the abundance estimate and spatial distribution of harbor porpoise as seen this year with that seen in previous years. 5) Investigate if inland bays can be surveyed using a rigidhull inflatable boat as the observation platform in a line transect survey. 6) Determine if Buckland's sighting procedure (1991), which is a line transect survey using both a primary and marking team, is a feasible procedure to estimate the abundance of harbor porpoise in the Bay of Fundy area.

In addition to the sighting data, effort data was recorded every half hour or whenever conditions change. This dataset, therefore, should be used with the effort data.

David Potter, National Marine Fisheries Service. 1991. CRUISE REPORT OF THE HARBOR PORPOISE SURVEY - 1991 AJ91-02

Overview

Attributes described below represent those in the original dataset provided by the provider.
Only minimum required attributes are visible and downlodable online. Other attributes may be obtained upon provider's permission unless otherwise noteded below.

Attributes in dataset provided

Attribute (table column)	Description
dataset
lineno
cruise
date
time
latitude
longitude
species
common
tsn
scientific
group_
rank
herdsize
transect
leg
excluded
oid