Cascadia Research Blue Whale Photo IDs for US West Coast, 1972-2004
Cascadia Research

Cascadia Research

This dataset consists of 6,560 sighting records, including at least 1,803 uniquely identified blue whales. These were collected by Cascadia Research and collaborators from the eastern North Pacific from 1975 through 2004 (data collection is continuing). The primary extent of this dataset includes waters off California, Oregon, and Washington from 1986 to 2004, which accounts for over 6,000 of the records. Additional sighting records are from other regions of the North Pacific including the Eastern Tropical Pacific, British Columbia, and Alaska. These data represent the most extensive database of blue whale sightings available from the waters off the western United States and have provided the primary information available on movements and abundance of eastern North Pacific blue whales. Effort was not evenly distributed throughout the region so sighting locations are biased towards areas of highest effort. ID field links resightings of the same individual.

Data were gathered to document movements, population structure and abundance of blue whales in the eastern North Pacific (see Calambokidis and Barlow 2004, Calambokidis and Steiger 1997, Calambokidis et al. 1990).

Updated on March 30, 2006, expanding the dataset up to 2004.

Calambokidis, J. and J. Barlow. 2004. Abundance of blue and humpback whales in the eastern North Pacific estimated by capture-recapture and line-transect methods. Marine Mammal Science. 20(1):63-85

Calambokidis, J. and G.H. Steiger. 1997. Blue Whales. Worldlife Series Library. Voyager Press, MN. 72 pp

Calambokidis, J., G.H. Steiger, J.C. Cubbage, K.C. Balcomb, C. Ewald, S. Kruse, R. Wells, and R. Sears. 1990. Sightings and movements of blue whales off central California 1986-88 from photo-identification of individuals. Report of the International Whaling Commission. Special Issue 12:342-348

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
series
researchgr
loccode
region
sub_area
locality
date	Observed date
time	Observed time
lat_s
lon_s
lat	Latitude of observation
long	Longitude of observation
positionty
groupsize
numcalves
numids
groupbeh
photograph
quall
qualr
qualf
species	Species observed
tsn	Species ITIS TSN
oid	Unique ID number (generated by SEAMAP)