AMAPPS Northeast Aerial Cruise Spring 2019

NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC)

During spring (3 April – 15 May 2019) the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) conducted aerial abundance surveys targeting marine mammals and sea turtles. The southwestern extent was New Jersey and the northeastern extent was off of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada on the Scotia Shelf. The surveys covered waters from the coastline to about the 2000-m depth contour. Track lines were flown 183 m (600 ft) above the water surface, at about 200 kph (110 knots). The two-independent team methodology was used to collect data. Approximately 10,392 km of on-effort track lines were surveyed, where 89% of this effort was in Beaufort 3 and below.

The objectives of this aerial flight was 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 ecosystem.

The survey code is TONE19SPR.

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
sp_tsn	Taxonomic Serial Number added by OBIS-SEAMAP
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
datasetname	Dataset name by provider
eventdate	Date and time of the sigthing at local time
eventdatetimezone	The time zone of the observation event
eventdate_utc	Date of the sighting in UTC
time_utc	Time of the sighting in UTC
effortid	Effort ID
cue	Sighingt cue
behavior	Behavior
beaufort	Beaufort sea scale
geom	Geometry field added by OBIS-SEAMAP