PIROP Northwest Atlantic 1965-1992

Falk Huettmann & John W. Chardine, Canadian Wildlife Service

The PIROP (Programme Intégré de recherches sur les oiseaux pélagiques) data set, Atlantic subset, consists of geo-referenced vessel-based surveys to monitor pelagic seabirds. Most surveys were carried out by R.G. B. Brown from 'vessels of opportunity' supplied by the Bedford Institute for Oceanography (BIO) in Dartmouth/Halifax, but many other platforms and observers were used, too. During these surveys observations other than seabirds were also recorded, e.g. Waterfowl, Waterbirds, Songbirds, Raptors, Owls, Sea Mammals, and other sightings of interest (weather, oceanography, vessel activities, bird behaviour, etc.). The data collection period covers all seasons of 1966-1992, with most surveys being conducted between (late) summers of 1975-1987. The survey protocol originally consisted of unlimited width 10min transects, but was changed appr. 1984 towards a Tasker et al. (1984) type of survey (fixed-width strip transect). However, data and results from the PIROP database need to be interpreted as relative, and not absolute, abundance.

The PIROP data were collected for Canadian seabird monitoring purposes, focussing on the Canadian Atlantic, but also on other areas relevant to Canadian birds such as waters off Peru, off West Africa and off Europe.

[2020-09-30] The following invalid species names were corrected according to the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS).
Larus ridibundus (176835) => Chroicocephalus ridibundus (824041)
Bonaparte's Gull: Larus philadelphia (176839) => Chroicocephalus philadelphia (824040)
Bridled Tern: Sterna anaethetus (176897) => Onychoprion anaethetus (824104)
Caspian Tern: Sterna caspia (176924) => Hydroprogne caspia (176935)
Franklin's Gull: Larus pipixcan (176838) => Leucophaeus pipixcan (824082)
Great Skua: Catharacta skua (176796) => Stercorarius skua (660059)
Laughing Gull: Larus atricilla (176837) => Leucophaeus atricilla (824079)
Halocyptena microsoma (174648) => Oceanodroma microsoma (174646)
Little Gull: Larus minutus (176840) => Hydrocoloeus minutus (824065)
Little Tern: Sterna albifrons (176899) => Sternula albifrons (824126)
Manx Shearwater: Puffinus puffinus puffinus (174556) => Puffinus puffinus (174555)
Royal Tern: Sterna maxima (176922) => Thalasseus maximus (824142)
Sandwich Tern: Sterna sandvicensis (176927) => Thalasseus sandvicensis (176932)
Catharacta (176795) => Stercorarius (176791)
Larus hemprichii (176854) => Ichthyaetus hemprichii (824067)
Sooty Tern: Sterna fuscata (176894) => Onychoprion fuscatus (824105)
South Polar Skua: Catharacta maccormicki (176801) => Stercorarius maccormicki (660062)
Actitis macularia (176612) => Actitis macularius (726049)
Pterodroma rostrata (174591) => Pseudobulweria rostrata (562522)
Larus sabini (176865) => Xema sabini (176866)
Phalaropodidae (176732) => Scolopacidae (176568)
Pinnipedia (180614) => Caniformia (552303)

[2020-08-18] Atlantic spotted dolphins and Pantropical spotted dolphins were associated with opposite scientific names and ITIS TSNs. This error is fixed.

[2015-03-24] Some records had a wrong animal count of zero. The value is replaced with a blank representing species presence only.

Data correction: Puffinus creatopus (Pink-footed Shearwater; ITIS: 174547) observed on 1982-08-16 12:00:00 at 53.9000:-55.5000 (id=151664) changed to Procellariidae (Shearwaters; ITIS: 174532) as P. creatopus does not occur in the Atlantic.

The PIROP data has effort data which is not as complete as to generate tracklines. It's available upon request and you are strongly encouraged to discuss with the data providers how to handle the effort data.

The PIROP data set is a large pool of seabird data, which got extended and modified over the years, e.g. due to changes of objectives and staff. Appr. in 1998 the data were merged by CWS-Dartmouth office with the Manomet Bird Observatory Seabird database, which cover mostly the Gulf of Maine region.

The following references refer to the PIROP database and present an overview about the structure, application and value of the data:

• Brown R.G.B. 1967. Sea Birds off Halifax. Canadian Field-Naturalist 81:276-8.


• Brown R.G.B. 1970. Fulmar distribution: a Canadian perspective. Ibis 111:44-51.


• Brown, R.G.B. 1971. PIROP Instruction Manual. Canadian Wildlife Service, Dartmouth.


• Brown R.G.B. 1973. Transatlantic migration of Fulmars from the European Arctic. Canadian Field-Naturalist 87:312-3.


• Brown R.G.B. 1977. Atlas of eastern Canadian seabirds Supplement 1 Halifax-Bermuda transects. Canadian Wildlife Service, Ottawa.


• Brown R.G.B. 1979. Seabirds of the Senegal upwelling and adjacent waters. Ibis 121:283-92.


• Brown R.G.B. 1984. Seabirds in the Greenland, Barents and Norwegian Seas, February-April 1982. Polar Research 2:1-18.


• Brown R.G.B. 1986. Revised Atlas of Eastern Canadian Seabirds. Bedford Institute of Oceanography: Candian Wildlife Service, Ottawa.


• Brown R.G.B. 1988. The Wing-moult of Fulmars and Shearwaters (Procellariidae) in Canadian Atlantic Waters. Canadian Field-Naturalist 102:203-8.


• Brown R.G.B. 1991.Marine birds and climatic warming in the northwest Atlantic. In: Montevecchi W.A, Gaston A.J., eds. Studies of high-latitude seabirds.1.Behavioural, energetic, and oceanographic aspects of seabird feeding ecology. Volume Occasional Paper Number 1968. Canadian Wildlife Service, Ottawa.


• Brown R.G.B and D.N. Nettleship 1983. Seabird distribution studies. (Bedford Institute of Oceanography BIO Review '83). Canadian Wildlife Service, Ottawa.


• Brown R.G.B., Nettleship D.N., Germain P, Tull C.E., and Davis T. 1975. Atlas of eastern Canadian seabirds. Canadian Wildlife Service, Ottawa.


• Diamond A.W. 1985. A computer model of the energy demands of the seabirds of eastern and arctic Canada. Volume Final Report. Canadian Wildlife Service, Ottawa.


• Diamond A.W., Gaston A.J., and Brown R.G.B. 1986. Converting PIROP counts of seabirds at sea to absolute densities. Progress Notes No 164


• Diamond A.W., Gaston A.J., and Brown R.G.B.. 1993 Studies of high-latitude seabirds. 3.A model of the energy demands of the seabirds of eastern Arctic CanadaMontevecchi WA, ed. Occasional Paper Number 77. Canadian Wildlife Service, Ottawa


• Germain P., Brown R.G.B., and Tull C.E. 1973. Autumn seabird distribution in Canadian Arctic and Greenland waters. Studies on Northern Seabirds. Manuscript Report(No.
  


• Huettmann, F. 1997. TraPirp2: SQL PIROP import codes from ASCII Text into dBASE format. ACWERN (Atlantic Cooperative Wildlife Ecology Research Network), Faculty of Forestry and Environmental Management, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, Canada.


• Huettmann, F. 1998. An Ecological GIS Research Application for the Northern Atlantic-The PIROP Database Software, Environmental Data Sets and the Role of the Internet/WWW. In: Riekert W.-F. and Tochtermann K. (Eds.) Hypermedia im Umweltschutz Proceedings
  of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI) and Forschungsinstitut für anwendungsorientierte Wissensverarbeitung (FAW) Ulm. Umwelt-Informatik aktuell; Bd.17, Metropolis Verlag/Marburg. pp. 213-217.


• Huettmann F. 2000a. Environmental Determination of Seabird Distribution in the Northwest Atlantic. Atlantic Cooperative Ecology Wildlife Research Network (ACWERN). University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, N.B./Canada


• Huettmann, F. 2000b. Making use of public large-scale environmental databases from the WWW and a GIS for georeferenced prediction modelling: A research application
  using Generalized Linear Models, Classification and Regression Trees and Neural Networks. In: Tochtermann, K. and Riekert W.-F. (Eds.) Hypermedia im Umweltschutz Proceedings of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI) and Forschungsinstitut für anwendungsorientierte Wissensverarbeitung (FAW) Ulm. Umwelt-Informatik aktuell; Bd.24, Metropolis Verlag/Marburg. pp. 308-312.


• Huettmann F. 2000. Seabird migration in the Canadian North Atlantic: moulting locations and movement patterns of immatures. Canadian Journal of Zoology 33:1-25.


• Huettmann, F. and Lock, T. 1997. A new software system for the PIROP database: data flow and an approach for a seabird-depth analysis. ICES Journal of Marine Science 54:518-23.


• Huettmann, F. and Diamond, A.W. 2001a. Using PCA Scores to classify species communities: an example using seabird classifications at sea. Journal for Applied Statistics 28:843-853.


• Huettmann F. and Diamond A.W. 2001b. Seabird colony locations and environmental determination of seabird distribution: A spatially explicit seabird breeding model in the Northwest Atlantic. Ecological Modelling 141: 261-298.


• King, W.B., Watson, G.E. and Gould, P.J. 1967. An application of automatic data processing to the study of the world ocean. Proceedings of the U.S. National Museum. 123, No 3609.


• Lock A.R., Brown R.G.B., Gerriets S.H. 1994. Gazetteer of Marine Birds in Atlantic Canada. Canadian Wildlife Service, Dartmouth NS Canada

Overview

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
dataset	Dataset ID assigned by OBIS-SEAMAP
lineno	Line No added by OBIS-SEAMAP
species	Species code
tsn	ITIS Taxonomic Serial Number added by OBIS-SEAMAP
common	Species common name added by OBIS-SEAMAP
scientific	Species scientific name added by OBIS-SEAMAP
rank	Taxonomic rank added by OBIS-SEAMAP
count	Raw abundance: Number of birds counted per sighting
bird_km	Relative encounter rate: number of birds sighted within the transect per km surveyed
rel_count	Reliability of number estimation for the sighting
type_spec	Code of seabird flock type within a species
rel_ident	Reliability code of species identification
ship	Code of ship name
cruise	Code of cruise
observer	Code of observer name
declat	Decimal degrees of latitude
declong	Decimal degrees of longitude
month	Month of the year as a 2-digit number
day	Day of the month as a 2-digit number
year	Year as a 2-digit number
time	Greenwich Standard Time (hours and minutes)
obsdate	Date of the observation added by OBIS-SEAMAP
obstime	Time of the observation (local time) added by OBIS-SEAMAP
format	PIROP format refers to the number and type of data fields recorded: 57 and 97
obs_len	Length of observation/transect in minutes (usually 10 minutes)
speed	Ship speed in knots (value of 0 denotes lack of data)
kilometers	Kilometers traveled during transect length (normally within 10 minutes)
direction	Direction of boat (heading) in degrees (0: ship stopped, 99 : no data)
activity	Ship activity during transect
num_obser	Number of observers that carry out the survey. 0 means no data available
height	Observer eye height above the water code: 1 under 15ft, 2 15-30ft, 3 30-60ft, 40 over 60ft
type	Watch types
reliabilit	Reliability of transect
visibility	Visibility during transect
weather	Weather code during transect
state_sea	State of sea code during transect
angle_view	View angle for transect
excluded	internal use added by OBIS-SEAMAP
geom	Geometry field added by OBIS-SEAMAP
oid	Unique ID number (generated by OBIS-SEAMAP)