Opportunistic marine mammal sightings from commercial whale watching vessels, Montauk, New York 1981-1994

Coastal Research and Education Society of Long Island, Inc.

The sightings came originally from the
Okeanos Ocean Research Foundation (Samuel S. Sadove, executive director; Okeanos is no longer in existence), and were recorded from commercial whale-watching vessels out of Montauk in late spring and summer of 1981–1994 (primarily the Finback I and Finback II). These sightings are heavily concentrated in the area between eastern Long Island and Block Island and during the whale-watching season, and therefore somewhat biased, but provide valuable information on several less-common species.

not provided

Data records that were missing time, animal count information, or located on land were excluded. One data record with two sighted species listed was also excluded.

Overview

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 described below represent those in the original dataset provided by the provider.
Only minimum required attributes are visible and downloadable online. Other attributes may be obtained upon provider's permission.

Attributes in dataset

Attribute (table column)	Description
oid	Unique ID (created by OBIS-SEAMAP)
obsnum	Observation number
obs_date	Date of observation
time_orig	Time (original format)
obs_time	Time (reformatted as hh:mm:ss)
sp_origin	Species observed (original format)
sp_obs	Species observed (edited)
sp_tsn	Species ITIS TSN
obs_count	Number of animals sighted
loran1	Loran C coordinate 1
loran2	Loran C coordinate 2
lat_origin	Latitude (original format)
long_origin	Longitude (original format)
latdeg	Latitude (degree)
latmin	Latitude (minute)
longdeg	Longitude (degree)
longmin	Longitude (minute)
latitude	Latitude (decimal degrees)
longitude	Longitude (decimal degrees)
reliabil	Reliability
behavior	Behavior
behavcode	Behavior code
cowcalf	Cow calf
cowcalfnum	Cow calf number
geom	definition not provided