SWFSC Marine Mammal Survey, CAMMS 1991, Cruise 1426

NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center (SWFSC)

This 1991 line-transect survey was designed to make abundance estimates for the cetacean species commonly found in California waters and killed in commercial gill net fishing operations. This survey was conducted by the NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center aboard NOAA Ship McArthur for a total of approximately 10,000 kilometers surveyed from late July to early November 1991. This dataset provides the time-date and geographical
coordinates, by species/stock, of all cetaceans detected during the survey, as well as the daily and intra-daily start and end points of the line-transect survey.

The primary purpose of the cruise was to estimate the abundance and understand the distribution of dolphin and whale species that inhabit California waters and are killed in United States commercial gill net fishing operations.

SWFSC MMTD Cruise Number: 1426
Perpendicular distance will be released upon permission by the contributor. Please contact the contributor if needed.

Overview

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)
event	Event code. S = cetacean sighting, t = sea turtle sighting, p = pinniped sighting
datetime	Date and time of sighting (local time)
lat	Latitude (decimal degrees) of vessel when sighting was made
lon	Longitude (decimal degrees) of vessel when sighting was made
cruise	SWFSC Marine Mammal and Turtle Divison Cruise number
sightno	Sighting number (within Cruise)
nsp	Number of species observed in the sighting
mixed	TRUE for a multi-species sighting (nSp >= 2); FALSE otherwise (nSp = 1)
spcode	Species code
sp_tsn	Taxonomic Serial Number added by OBIS-SEAMAP
gsspbest	The mean of all observers
gssphigh	The mean of all observers
gssplow	The mean of all observers
perpdistkm	Perpendicular distance (km) to sighting from trackline; Available upon permission.
bft	Beaufort sea state, as assessed by looking upswell with the naked eye
swellhght	Average swell height from trough to crest of typical swells (estimated in feet, by eye)
vis	A measure of air/atmospheric clarity only, as affected by observational conditions such as fog, rain, etc.
groupsize_sightno	Running count ID of all cetacean groups recorded
groupsize_count	Number of observers that provided a group size estimate
groupsize_count_obs	Number of unique observer codes per sighting for S events
geom	Geometry field added by OBIS-SEAMAP