Cetacean and sea turtle sightings from offshore Republic of Congo

Marijke N. de Boer

The cetacean communities inhabiting eastern tropical Atlantic (ETA) waters
along the west coast of Africa are globally amongst the most poorly studied.
The limited recent information available is derived mainly from the monitoring
of strandings and fisheries interactions at landing sites. However, little is
known about the habitat preferences of the species that occur off Congo
because at-sea sightings have rarely been published.

The main purpose of this study was to contribute information on the
distribution and relative abundance of cetaceans sighted during a geophysical
survey in Congo waters and where possible relating the occurrence of different
species with oceanographic parameters such as sea surface temperature (SST)
and depth.

The cetacean & turtle data were collected during a dedicated marine
megafauna survey

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)
sighting_number	Sighting number
date_time	Date and time at GMT
observer	Observer name
decimal_latitude	Latitude at decimal degrees
decimal_longitude	Longitude at decimal degrees
water_depth	Water depth (metres)
species	Species name
latin_name	Scientific name
sp_tsn	Taxonomic Serial Number added by OBIS-SEAMAP
certainty	Certainty of the animal identification
bearing_to_animal	Bearing to animal
range_of_animal	Range of animal (metres)
total_number	Total number of individuals
number_of_adults	Number of adults
number_of_juveniles	Number of juveniles
number_of_calves	Number of calves (visual sightings only)
photo	Was photo taken (yes/no)
behaviour	Behaviour
direction_of_travel	Direction of travel (compass points)
geom	Geometry field added by OBIS-SEAMAP