Virginia CZM Wind Energy Area Survey- Right side - November 2012 through April 2014

Virginia Aquarium Foundation - Sarah D. Mallette, Gwen G. Lockhart, Susan G. Barco
University of North Carolina Wilmington - William A. McLellan, Ryan J. McAlarney Erin W. Cummings and D. Ann Pabst

The data provided were collected as part of the Documenting Whale Migration off Virginia's Coast for Use in Marine Spatial Planning project - funded by the Virginia Coastal Zone Management Program Grant Section 309 Environmental Enhancement Program Strategy Project of Special Merit No. NA12NOS4190027. Aerial surveys were conducted under NOAA Scientific Permits No. 948-1692-00 and 16473, held by UNCW.

On November 1, 2013, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced Dominion Virginia Power was the provisional winner of the commercial lease area offshore of Virginia (VA WEA). Development of off shore wind energy poses potential threats to marine mammals, including direct effects (i.e. vessel interactions, collision and entanglement with structures, displacement, avoidance, or injury due to noise from construction or operations) and indirect threats (i.e. effects on prey species, increased risk of fishery and vessel interaction through displacement out of the WEA) (BOEM 2012). This information is important to mitigate the potentially harmful impacts from ocean development, shipping, and other anthropogenic activities. To address these existing data gaps, we have collected marine mammal sighting data from multiple platforms in addition to sea turtle sighting data off the coast of Virginia from 2012 to 2014.

[2015-02-25] Off-effort sightings were appended in response to provider's request.

The original survey data are separated into two datasets, collected from left-side and right-side observers to address variance in environmental and sighting conditions. This dataset is from the right side sightings data. The left side sightings data are available on OBIS-SEAMAP in the Virginia CZM Wind Energy Area Survey- Left side - November 2012 through April 2014 dataset.

he effort data layer, for this project is static transect lines. The plane track lines are available by request.

Off-effort sightings were removed from this dataset.

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 number (generated by OBIS-SEAMAP)
row_id	Row ID (generated by OBIS-SEAMAP)
obs_date	Observation date
obs_time	Observation time in Eastern Standard Time
waypoint	Waypoint number generated by GPS
latitude	Latitude in decimal degrees
longitude	Longitude in decimal degrees
event	codes assigned to each waypoint; Event. 1.1 = On effort/on track; 1.2 = Off effort. Full codes are available upon request.
heading	Heading
track_num	Track number
observer	Observer left or right
visibility	Visibility code . Code descriptions available upon request.
bss	Baufort sea state
cloud	Cloud cover code. Code descriptions available upon request.
glare_l	Glare Left code. Code descriptions available upon request.
glare_r	Glare Right code. Code descriptions available upon request.
vertical_angle	Vertical angle in decimal degrees
horizontal_angle	Horizontal angle in decimal degrees
sighting_cue	Sighting cue code. Code descriptions available upon request.
sp_obs	Species name recorded
sp_tsn	Taxonomic Serial Number added by OBIS-SEAMAP
reliability	Reliability
min_count	Minimum number of animals
max_count	Maximum number of animals
obs_count	best estimate of number of animals
comments	Comments
datetime_ini	Internal use generated by OBIS-SEAMAP
latitude_ini	Internal use generated by OBIS-SEAMAP
longitude_ini	Internal use generated by OBIS-SEAMAP
geom	Geometry field added by OBIS-SEAMAP