University of New Brunswick: Harbour seal (Phoca vitulina) abundance, distribution, and behaviour in the Saint John Harbour as observed between April-August in 1999 and 2000

OBIS and OBIS Canada

Harbour seal (Phoca vitulina) abundance, distribution, and behaviours were examined in the Saint John harbour, Saint John, New Brunswick as part of a UNB Department of Biology honours project (Browne, 2001).
The study was conducted from May-August in 1999 and April-August in 2000. Seal counts in the water were made with respect to tide, time of day and season, human activities and disturbances.
Seal counts were compared to peaks in fish runs of gaspereau (Alosa pseudoharengus) and Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar). Fishers of the Saint John harbour were interviewed to document interactions between seals and fisheries.
Seal observations recorded as part of this thesis project (Browne, 2001) were rescued and reformatted as part of an Atlantic Ecosystem Initiative activity.
This version of the resource contains observations of the harbour seals - associated information on behaviour and occurrence of grey seals and gaspereau is not included in this version.

N/A

This dataset was downloaded from OBIS (https://obis.org/). The records for only marine mammals, seabirds, sea turtles and rays and sharks were extracted. Records with no longitude/latitude or no date (eventDate) were excluded.
OBIS dataset page:
https://obis.org/dataset/108c84f3-ea9f-47cd-82c1-6b89ea9b292c
Data Provider's dataset page:
http://ipt.iobis.org/obiscanada/resource?r=browncl_unb_honours2001

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 are defined by OBIS.

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	Internal ID
id	Record ID
dataset_id	Dataset ID
scientificname	Scientific name
vernacularname	Vernacular name
aphiaid	Aphia ID
taxonrank	taxononic rank
individualcount	Group size / individual count
eventdate	Event date (precision varies)
eventtime	Event time
decimallatitude	Latitude in decimal degrees
decimallongitude	Longitude in decimal degrees
coordinateprecision	Coordinate precision
catalognumber	Catalog number
collectioncode	Collection code
occurrencestatus	Occurrence status
basisofrecord	Basis of record (HumanObservation / MachineObservation)
modified	Date/time the record was modified
node_id	Node ID
occurrenceid	Occurrence ID
occurrenceremarks	Occurrence remarks
eventid	Event ID
institutioncode	Institution code
lifestage	Life stage
sex	Sex of the animal if known
species	Species by provider
datasetid	Dataset ID by provider
country	Country
locality	Location of ocean
waterbody	Details of ocean
dropped	Flag indicating the record was dropped (always false)
absence	Flag indicating the record represents the absence of the species (always false)
marine	Flag indicating the record is for marine life (always true)
obs_datetime
tprecision
on_land
date_in_future