Marine mammal monitoring from coastal sites in Cardigan Bay, UK, 2004-2009
Liz Allan

Ceredigion County Council

Since 1994, Ceredigion County Council and a network of shore-based volunteer observes have monitored levels of boat traffic and the occurrence of bottlenose dolphins at seven sites on the coast of Cardigan Bay, Wales. We report high rates of site use and site occupancy by this species during the summer. Although trends in site use may not reflect population trends in the wider region, these data were consistent with recent abundance estimates that indicate that the number of bottlenose dolphins using Cardigan Bay is stable or slightly increasing.

Cardigan Bay is a Special Area of Conservation for bottlenose dolphins and other species and habitats. Recreational boating is known to have the potential to cause disturbance to cetaceans and this monitoring study provides data that underpins the effectiveness of management.

Time was not recorded in the original dataset and is filled with 0:00:00.

Pierpoint, C., L. Allan, H. Arnold, P. Evans, S. Perry, L. Wilberforce and J. Baxter. 2009. Monitoring important coastal sites for bottlenose dolphin in Cardigan Bay, UK. Journal of the Marine Biological Association. 89(5):1033-1043

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.

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)
tblwatches_opindex
site	Site name
observer	Observer name
obs_date	Observed date
obs_time	Observed time
watch
intervalindex
sightingindex
sp_obs	Species observed
sp_tsn	Species ITIS TSN
obs_count	Observed count
range
calves
gridcell
activitystate
directionoftravel
mapped
notes
longitude	Longitude of observation
latitude	Latitude of observation
opindex
interval
generalweather
winddirection
seastate
boattype
all_range
boats300
boatactivity
s1
s2
s3
s4
s5
s6
t1
t2
t3
hf
hs
ap
br
l
bl
ts
sb
o
gf
gs
ospecified