Baltic Seabirds Transect Surveys
Institute of Ecology of Vilnius University

Gediminas Vaitkus, Institute of Ecology of Vilnius University

Seabirds transect surveys were conducted in Baltic Sea from 1992 to 1999. Standard seabird offshore sampling techniques assume that line transect of 300 m width is basically used for counting birds sitting on the water surface, whereas the 'snap-shot' method is used for the counting of flying birds at strongly fixed intervals of time.

Additional efforts were put into studies of the offshore seabird and waterfowl movements. We recorded flying birds along 1,000 m wide transect over the 'classic' 300 m transect used for calculations of seabird densities during 'snap-shots'.

The main purpose of our work was to investigate spatial structure and dynamics of the offshore seabird populations and to assess their status in specific conditions of the Baltic Sea marine ecosystem. The main tasks of our work were the following:
-Study species composition, abundance and spatial distribution of seabird populations in different seasons of the year, distinguish dominating species and the most important seabird concentration areas in the eastern Baltic;
-Study community structure of inter-specific assemblages and ecological adaptations of wintering seabird populations;
-Study the processes of spatial dynamics and trends of spatial structure in regional seabird populations within the gradient of winter climatic conditions; and
-Study offshore migratory routes and temporary concentration areas of seabirds in the Baltic Proper.

N/A

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
transect
date	Date of observation
time	Time of observation
type
vessel
o1
o2
status
lat	Latitude of observation
lon	Longitude of observation
knots
course
species	Species observed
tsn	Species ITIS TSN
scientific
common
rank
number	Number of animals observed
distance
pattern
age
plumage
direction
fd_real
moult
remarks
oid	Unique ID number (generated by SEAMAP)