US Navy marine mammal and sea turtle sightings from aerial surveys, Vieques, Puerto Rico 2000

U.S. Department of the Navy

Geo-Marine, Inc. (GMI), under contract with the U.S. Deptartment of the Navy, conducted aerial surveys for manatees, other marine mammals, and sea turtles over the surrounding waters, and for sea turtle nests along the beaches of Vieques Island, Puerto Rico. The intent of these aerial surveys was to determine the presence of sea turtles, sea turtle nests, or marine mammals in the areas surrounding the Live Impact Area (LIA), Yellow Beach within the Atlantic Fleet Weapons Training Facility (AFWTF), or other identified exercise locations around Vieques, Naval Station Roosevelt Roads (NSRR), and Offshore areas. These surveys were conducted to comply with the Biological Opinions issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in 2000 and 2001, respectively.

Baseline information regarding protected natural resources is critical in order to assess the potential impacts of federal action to those resources. Here, aerial surveys were conducted to provide baseline information on marine mammals, birds, and sea turtles utilizing beaches and the surrounding waters of the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico, USA. Portions of the island are currently being remediated by the U.S. Navy under CERCLA. These data were used in support of developing biological evaluations of Navy activities under CERCLA.

One sighting record on land was excluded.

December 17, 2013: Nesting data from this study were contributed to the State of the World's Sea Turtles (SWOT) database and can be viewed online. (Click the icon next to the "SWOT #nesting records" > type in "Andrew DiMatteo" in the search box within the "SWOT Nesting Records on Map" window.)

The dataset has been updated over time as outlined below. Each entry includes the version number, release date, type of change, and a short description.

Overview

Attributes described below represent those in the original dataset provided by the provider.
All attributes are included in the downloadable file (CSV or ESRI File Geodatabase) for "Complete Set of Dataset".

Attributes in dataset

Attribute (table column)	Description
oid	Unique ID (created by OBIS-SEAMAP)
totrecnum	Record number (all data)
recnum	Record number (by spreadsheet)
obs_date	Date of observation
observers	Observers
start_time	Start time
end_time	End time
seastate	Sea state
weather	Weather
airspeed	Air speed in original format (knots; multiple valueas may be joined with
altitude_or	Altitude in original format (feet; multiple valueas may be joined with
obs_count	Number of animals sighted
sp_obs_origin	Species observed (original)
sp_obs	Species observed (edited)
sp_tsn	ITIS Taxonomic Serial Number added by OBIS-SEAMAP
obs_time_orig	Time of observation (original)
obs_time	Time (reformatted as hh:mm:ss)
location	Location
easting	Easting
northing	Northing
zone	UTM Zone (20)
notes_origin	Original notes
survey	Survey notes
survey2	Survey notes 2
notes	Notes (created by OBIS-SEAMAP)
latitude	Latitude (decimal degrees)
longitude	Longitude (decimal degrees)
geom	definition not provided