USWTR JAX Aerial Survey -Right side- 2009-2010
University of North Carolina, Wilmington

William A. McLellan, University of North Carolina Wilmington

A multi-institutional, marine protected species monitoring program, involving aerial, vessel and acoustic surveillance techniques, has been implemented at the proposed Under Sea Warfare Training Range (USWTR) offshore of Jacksonville, Florida. Ten 87 km track-lines spaced 6.5 km apart transect the 1295 km2 USWTR box, which is located between 60 and 150 km offshore. Aerial surveys were flown in a Cessna Skymaster at 300 m altitude and 185 km/h. A total of 155 track-lines (13485 km) were surveyed, the majority flown in low Beaufort Sea State (BSS) conditions (92 % in BSS 3 or lower) to maximize sighting conditions.

To estimate marine mammal density, distribution, and seasonality, a multi-platform approach was implemented using traditional visual line transect survey methods from aerial and vessel platforms along with passive acoustic monitoring from vessels and moored instruments.

The original survey data are separated into two datasets, from left and right observers. This dataset is from the right side sightings data. The left side sightings data are available on OBIS-SEAMAP in the USWTR JAX Aerial Survey -Left side- 2009-2010 dataset.

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 noted below.

This section explains attributes included in the original dataset. OBIS-SEAMAP restricts the attributes available to the public to date/time, lat/lon and species names/counts only. Should you need other attributes described here, you are encouraged to contact the data provider.

Attributes in dataset provided

Attribute (table column)	Description
oid	Unique ID number (generated by SEAMAP)
id	Row ID assigned by OBIS-SEAMAP
obs_date	date of observation
latitude	Latitude in decimal degrees
obs_time	time of observation
way_point	way point
longitude	Longitude in decimal degrees
event	Event. 1.1 = On effort/on track; 1.2 = Off effort. Full codes are available upon request.
heading	Heading
track_no	Track Number
observer	Observer Number
vizability	Visibility
bss	BSS
cloud	Cloud
angle_out	Verticale angle
glare_l	Glare Left
glare_r	Glare Right
degree_forward	Horizontal angle
reliability	Reliability
sighting_cue	Sighting Cue
species	species observed in provider-specific codes
num_min	Min number of animals
num_max	Maximum number of animals
obs_count	best estimate of number of animals
comments	Comments
sp_tsn	ITIS taxonomic serial number. This field added by OBIS-SEAMAP