AMAPPS Northeast Aerial Cruise Summer 2011

NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC)

During 7-26 August 2011, the Northeast Fisheries Science Center(NEFSC)conducted an aerial abundance survey targeting marine mammals and sea turtles. The NEFSC’s survey covered waters from Long Island, New York, USA to the southern tip of Nova Scotia, Canada, and from the coastline to about the
100 m depth contour. This aerial survey was a component of the AMAPPS project. The airplane flew at 600 feet above the water surface at about 110 knots. The two independent team data collection methods were used. Within the study area of 199,656 km2, there were about 6,481 km of on-effort track lines, of which 5,979 km were conducted in sea state conditions less than Beaufort 4.On these track lines, there were 10 species of identifiable cetaceans,and 3 sea turtle species detected.

The objectives of the NEFSC aerial survey were 1) to estimate abundance of cetaceans and turtles in waters north of New Jersey and shallower than 100 m depth and 2) to investigate how the animals' distribution and abundance relate to their physical and biological ecosystem.

Perpendicular distance to the animal is not publicly available.

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)
tripid	Trip ID
platformvlts	Always
oneffort	Flag (Y/N) to indicate on effort.
speciescode	Species code
comname	Common name
kingdom	Kingdom
phylum	Phylum
class	Class
order_sci	Order
family	Family
scientificname	Scientific name
references_	References
observationheight	Altitude of aircraft in feet above sea level
platformspeed	Speed of the platform at the time of the sighting in knots
higherinstitutioncode	Higher institution code "DOC:NOAA:NEFSC"
institutioncode	Institution code "NEFSC"
ownerinstitutioncode	Instituion who owns the data "NEFSC"
basisofrecord	Basis of record "HumanObservation"
recordtype	Record type "VLTS" (visual line transect survey)
sightid	Sight ID
individualcount	Individual count
latitude	Latitude in decimal degrees
sighttype	Sighting type ("O")
longitude	Longitude in decimal degrees
perpendiculardistance	Perpendicular distance to the animal
datasetid	Dataset ID
datasetname	Dataset name
eventdate	Date and time of the sigthing at local time
eventdatetimezone	The time zone of the observation event
time	Date and time of the sighting in UTC
effortid	Effort ID
cue	The sighting cue that initially drew the observers attention
behavior	Behavior
geom	Geometry field added by OBIS-SEAMAP
typevlts	Flag to indicate the first observation sighting on transect (F) or others.