SOCAL Marine Mammal Aerial Monitoring 2008-2011
Smultea Environmental Sciences, LLC and HDR, Inc.

US Navy
Smultea Environmental Sciences
HDR, Inc.
Jenelle Black Science Services

UPDATE: survey data in 2011 were added. Marine mammal aerial surveys were conducted from 2008 to 2011 in the coastal and offshore waters of Southern California. This effort was in support of Marine Mammal Protection Act permit monitoring requirements for the US Navy's Southern California Range Complex. Data are from eight aerial surveys conducted under contract by Smultea Environmental Sciences, LLC and Marine Mammal Research Consultants, Ltd. There were 1,631 marine mammal sightings of over 145,000 animals representing 59287 km (32012 nm) of flight (both on and off effort). Although protocols used for these surveys have also been successful for sea turtles in other geographic areas, no sea turtles were observed in these SOCAL surveys. Continued survey efforts are foreseen from 2011 to 2013.

N/A

Publications based on these data are in progress and anticipated in 2012-13. There are several records with null animal counts. There are no count data for these sightings, but at least one animal should be assumed.

Smultea, M., J.S.D. Black, K. Lomac-MacNair. 2011. US Navy Marine Mammal Aerial Monitoring in the Southern California Bight 2008-2010. Report to the US Navy

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
location	SOCAL = Southern California Bight
survey	Survey code
obs_datetime	Date and time of sighting
sightingid	Sighting ID
sp_obs	Final species ID made by provider
sp_tsn	ITIS taxonomic serial number. This field added by OBIS-SEAMAP
obs_count	best estimate of number of animals
marinemammal	Marine mammal sighting or not. Always 1 in this dataset.
marmamsize	Animal size (e.g. large, medium, small)
mamtype	Mammal type (whale, dolphin, pinniped)
mamtypesize	Animal size within type (large, medium, small)
commongenus	Genus expressed in common name
commonspecies	Species expressed in common name
sp_order	Taxonomic order
sp_family	Taxonomic family
sp_genus	Taxonomic genus
species	Species
certainty	Certainty (certain, probable, possible; sometimes given in %)
longitude	Longitude in decimal degrees WGS84
latitude	Latitude in decimal degrees WGS84
altitude_m	Altitude in meters (for 2011 data, the values are converted from altitude_ft)
altitude_ft	Altitude in feet (for 2008-2010 data, the values are converted from altitude_m)
beaufort	Beaufort sea state
waterseason	Water state: warm/cold (only provided in 2011 data)
stglegtype	Sighting Leg Type (Systematic, Transiting, Leg Conn, Random, Fog Effort, Navy Directed)
effortstatus	Effort status on/off (only provided in 2011 data)