Historical occurrence of whales in Scottish Waters inferred from whaling records

IWC

Archived logbooks detailing landings at Scottish shore-based whaling stations between 1903 and 1951 were used to map whale catch locations.
Historical distribution and occurrence are inferred and summary statistics on total landings are updated for blue (Balaenoptera musculus), fin (Balaenoptera physalus), humpback (Megaptera novaeangliae), North Atlantic right (Eubalaena glacialis), sei (Balaenoptera borealis) and sperm (Physeter macrocephalus) whales: a total of 9,996 whales were caught
during this period, which is 3.7% higher than previously reported and 25% higher for blue whales.

N/A

This dataset contains a subset of the data used in the citation. The data
belong to IWC and the use of the data should be credited to the references.

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)
line	row line
station	Whaling station where whale was landed
iwc_line	row line (IWC)
vessel	Name of catcher vessel
ddest	definition not provided
landing_date	Landing date
time	Time is not available and this field is always "00:00:00"
catch_lat	Latitude of the catch
catch_long	Longitude of the catch
species	Species scientific name
sp_tsn	Taxonomic Serial Number added by OBIS-SEAMAP
obs_count	Number of animals (always 1) added by OBIS-SEAMAP
feet	Length of the body in feet
inches	Length of the body in inches
length	feet
length_unit	see IWC Technical Note 15
sex	Sex
foetus_n	Number of fetuses. see IWC Technical Note 15
foetus_length	Length of fetus 1. see IWC Technical Note 15
foetus_sex	Sex of fetus 1. see IWC Technical Note 15
foetus2_length	Length of fetus 2. see IWC Technical Note 15
foetus2_sex	Sex of fetus 2. see IWC Technical Note 15
station_code	IWC codes for stations / factory ships. see IWC Technical Note 15
nationality	Nationality of the catcher vessels. see IWC Technical Note 15
stomach_content	see IWC Technical Note 15
stomach_percentage_content	see IWC Technical Note 15
stomach_content_digestion	see IWC Technical Note 15
stomach_content_preysize	see IWC Technical Note 15
lost	struck and lost information. see IWC Technical Note 15
pregnant	see IWC Technical Note 15
maturity	see IWC Technical Note 15
data_conflict	see Ryan et al. 2022 supplementary information for how these conflicts were resolved
ref_place	Whale catch logbooks provided locations in reference to geographical locations (see Ryan et al., 2022 for more details)
ref_distance	Whale catch logbooks provided locations by distances to geographical locations (see Ryan et al., 2022 for more details) (metres)
ref_bearing	Whale catch logbooks provided locations by bearings to geographical locations (see Ryan et al., 2022 for more details) (degrees)
ref_lat	Latitude of the geographical reference points, such as headlands or islands (see Ryan et al., 2022 for more details)
ref_long	Longitude of the geographical reference points, such as headlands or islands (see Ryan et al., 2022 for more details)
region	Geographical region
station_lat	Latitude of the whaling station where the whale was landed
station_long	Longitude of the whaling station where the whale was landed
station_distance	Distance between the station and catch location (km)
geom	Geometry field added by OBIS-SEAMAP