Cetacean survey in Balabac Strait, Philippines
Louella Dolar

Louella Dolar
Conservation International

These are the sightings of cetaceans found in Balabac Strait, Palawan, Philippines. The survey was carried out on May 3-14, 2006 using the line transect method. The survey vessel was a 20 m boat with a sighting platform 5 m above sea level. The survey covered 718 km of trackline in an area of 6,538 sq. km. Funding was provided by Conservation International- Philippines.

The survey was carried out to characterize the cetacean fauna of Balabac Strait, Palawan, Philippines. Balabac Strait is one of the three Marine Biodiversity Conservarion Corridors in the Philippines delineated by Conservation International-Philippines. Information on the physico-chemical parameters such as sea surface temperature, salinity and total dissolved solids were also gathered.

The observations of B. edeni could be B. omurai (Omura's whale). These two species occur in Philippine waters and are very difficult to tell apart.

The observation for Stenella longirostris at 9:50 on 5/13/2006 is Stenella longirostris roseiventris.

Effort data will be appended later.

Dolar, M.L. 2006. Marine mammals of the marine biodiversity corridors in the Philippines: Verde Island Passage, Balabac Strait and Cagayan Ridge. Technical report submitted to Conservation International-Philippines

Overview

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Attributes in dataset provided

Attribute (table column)	Description
sight_no
date	Date of observation
time	Time of observation
effort	ON or OFF
latitude	Latitude of observation
longitude	Longitude of observation
sea_state	Beaufort sea state
obs_count	Number of animals observed
other_species	other species sighted together
sp_tsn	Species ITIS TSN
sp_obs	Species observed
comments
oid	Unique ID number (generated by SEAMAP)