Opportunistic records of marine megafauna in Suriname

Monique Pool, Green Heritage Fund of Suriname

The Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) project in Suriname was initiated in 2017. Part of this EU-funded project focussed on collecting all the information regarding marine megafauna within the region (Suriname and Guyana). As part of the MSP project we searched for potential marine megafauna data holders and different data-sets were found:
(1) research data: published and unpublished data collected during dedicated (effort-related) marine fauna surveys (where a GPS track was available);
(2) data collected by Marine Fauna Observers during geophysical seismic surveys (without an available GPS track);
(3) Opportunistic data collected without keeping track of effort (e.g. website, social media and other sighting records collected by university students or citizens); and
(4) Systematic land-based observations carried out during sea turtle surveys on Braamspunt. Here you can find all opportunistic records of marine megafauna in Suriname, including coastal and offshore regions. For the MSP-project we used records which were classed as 'Definite' or 'Probable'. Where 'Definite' records were accompanied by photo; and 'Probable' records had a good description and were coming from a trusted source. Other records with
an unsure identification (for example 'possible green turtle'), were upgraded to 'Probable' records of species-groups, e.g. 'hard-shelled turtle', 'ray species', 'shark species', 'dolphin sp'. All other records were discarded. NB all bird records submitted by the holders of the
database 'Birds of Suriname' were classed as 'Definite'.

The project aims to significantly enhance the governance and protection of marine and coastal resources of Guyana and Suriname through collaborative processes with all ocean stakeholders, improved knowledge of the coastal and marine environment, enhanced capacity of key stakeholders and informed marine spatial management. Upon completion of the marine Spatial planning project, we aim to continue to add new marine megafauna records to OBIS SEAMAP.

Accuracy of time varies record by record. '00:00' or '12:00' indicates the time is not 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.
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)
database_ref	Database reference
company	Company
date_org	Date in original format
start_time_org	Time in original format
timezone	Time zone (LT: local time zone)
date_time	Date / time
method	Method
observer_code	Observer code
latitude	Latitude in decimal degrees
longitude	Longitude in decimal degrees
water_depth	Water depth (m)
platformtype	Platform type
species	Species name
latin_name	Scientific name
sp_tsn	Taxonomic Serial Number added by OBIS-SEAMAP
species_certainty	Certainty of the species identification
num_animals	Total number of animals
adult	Number of adults
juv	Number of Juvenile
calf	Number of Carlves.
behaviour	Behaviour
geom	Geometry field added by OBIS-SEAMAP