Common Bottlenose Dolphin Photographic Identification Mark-Recapture Surveys Collected from Small Boats in the Northwestern Gulf of Mexico (NorTex Catalog) from to 2014-03-29 to 2019-06-28

Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network
National Marine Fisheries Service, Southeast Fisheries Science Center
Errol Ronje, NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information

As part of the marine mammal stock assessment program of the National
Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), photographic identification capture mark
recapture data were collected to estimate the abundance of common
bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) by the Southeast Fisheries
Science Center, Pascagoula, Mississippi Laboratory, and the Texas Marine
Mammal Stranding Network from 2014-03-29 to 2019-06-28. This dataset
contains spatiotemporal data from the "NorTex" catalog, including visual observations and dorsal fin images for individual dolphins encountered in the coastal and estuarine waters of
north Texas and western Louisiana including East Matagorda Bay, West
Bay, Galveston Bay, and Sabine Lake.

The Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 requires the National Marine
Fisheries Service (NMFS) to report the status of all marine mammal stocks in
USA waters. The primary purpose of this dataset was to collect common
bottlenose dolphin encounter data for capture-mark-recapture abundance
estimation models and to assess the spatial distribution of the dolphin group
encounters to inform stock assessment reports in three NMFS designated
stock areas: West Bay, Galveston Bay, and Sabine Lake.

Fin images are not included in the downloadable zipped file.

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)
research_area	Research Area
animal_id	Animal ID assigned by the contributor
latitude	Latitude in decimal degrees
longitude	Longitude in decimal degrees
obs_datetime	Date/time of sighting
image_file	File names of images taken
sp_obs	Species name
scientific_name	Scientific name
sp_tsn	Taxonomic Serial Number added by OBIS-SEAMAP
obs_count	Number of animals (always 1) added by OBIS-SEAMAP
sighting_no	Sighting No.
side	Side of the fin (L or R)
geom	Geometry field added by OBIS-SEAMAP