SWFSC Marine Mammal Survey, SWAPS 1997, Cruise 1607

Marine Mammal and Turtle Division, Southwest Fisheries Science Center, NMFS, NOAA

The 1997 Sperm Whale Abundance and Population Structures (SWAPS) line-transect survey was designed to census sperm whales near the end of their breeding season in the North Pacific Ocean from the west coast of the U.S. out to 158 degrees west longitude. This survey was conducted by the NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center aboard the NOAA ship McArthur for a total of approximately 12,000 kilometers surveyed from early March to early June 1997. This dataset provides the time-date and geographical coordinates, by species/stock, of all cetaceans detected during the survey, as well as the daily and intra-daily start and end points of the line-transect survey.

The primary objective was to census sperm whales near the end of their breeding season in the North Pacific Ocean from the west coast of the U.S. out to 158 degrees west longitude.

Data of SWFSC Marine Mammal Sightings from 1997 to 2009 were put together and submitted to OBIS-SEAMAP by Tim Gerrodette, NOAA SWFSC. The data are registered separately per cruise.

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.
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 number (generated by OBIS-SEAMAP)
cruise	Cruise No
obs_date	Date of the sighting
obs_time	Time of the sighting (local time zone)
sighting_no	Sighting No.
species_org	Species code in original format
sp_obs	Species code recorded
sp_tsn	Taxonomic Serial Number added by OBIS-SEAMAP
latitude	Latitude in decimal degrees
longitude	Longitude in decimal degrees
obs_count	Group size
geom	Geometry field added by OBIS-SEAMAP