AMAPPS Northeast Aerial Cruise Summer 2016

NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC)

During 14 August 2016–28 September 2016 the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) conducted an aerial abundance survey targeting marine mammals and sea turtles. The southwestern extent was New Jersey and the northeastern extent was the southern tip of Nova Scotia, Canada. This survey covered waters from the coast line to about the 100m depth contour (summer). The summer survey coordinated with another aerial survey south of this study area in US waters and north of this area in Canadian waters, along with shipboard surveys which covered waters deeper than 100 m. Track lines were flown 183 m (600 ft) above the water surface, at about 200 kph (110 knots), and the two-independent team methodology was used to collect data. In Beaufort sea states of five and less, during the summer about 11,782 km of on-effort track lines were accomplished, where 95% of this effort was in Beaufort 3 and below.

The objectives of these aerial flights were to collect the data needed to estimate abundance of cetaceans and turtles in the study area and to investigate how the animals’ distribution and abundance relate to their physical and biological ecosystem.

Perpendicular distance to the animal is not publicly available. Please contact the data provider to obtain this attribute.

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 A (Airplane)
oneffort	Flag (Y/N) to indicate on effort.
speciescode	Species code by provider
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