Atlantic grey seal breeding colonies in Hay and Saddle Islands, Nova Scotia

Duke Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing Lab

These RGB mosaics and thermal indices of Atlantic grey seal colonies at Hay and Saddle Island, Nova Scotia, were collected by small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). The mosaics and thermal indices were assessed by human analysts, who counted the seals in the mosaic and classified individuals as 'young of the year' or 'adult'. Concurrently, an automated detection and classification model was applied to the datasets and compared to human counts.

These datasets were used to assess Atlantic grey seal populations and to compare and test wildlife survey methods.

The downloadable shapefile includes TIFF images of RGB mosaics and thermal indices. The size of the zipped file is 1GB and may take a long time to download.

Within the dowloaded file, the 'Analysis Materials' folders contain point shapefiles of the seals counted and classified by human analysts. In addition, the folders contain the landscape masks that were applied to the thermal indices before running the automated detection models.

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

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)
fid	Internal Field ID
location	Location name
obs_date	Date of the sighting
obs_time	Time of the observation is not available
x	x coordinate
y	y coordinate
series	Tag ID
life_stage	Life stage (adult or juvenile)
longitude	Longitude in decimal degrees
latitude	Latitude in decimal degrees
species	Species name recorded
sp_tsn	ITIS Taxonomic Serial Number added by OBIS-SEAMAP
obs_count	Group size (always 1)
geom	Geometry field added by OBIS-SEAMAP