NEFSC 1995 pe9501

National Marine Fisheries Service

The survey was performed from 09 July 1995 to 03 August 1995, starting in Norfolk, VA and ending in Woods Hole, MA. The study area, covering approximately 39,200 nmi2, was in the slope waters from Chesapeake Bay, VA to Cape Cod, MA. Most of the survey was between 10 nautical miles (nmi) inshore of the 50 fathom contour and 10nmi offshore of the 1000 fathom contour.
This survey was part of a large scale marine mammal sighting survey which consisted of two legs (each approximately a month long) where two ships were used during each leg, with an addition leg in which a plane was used to survey for six weeks. The entire study area was from Chesapeake Bay, VA, USA to
the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Canada.

The objectives of this leg of the survey were to:
1) Determine the spatial distribution and estimate the abundance of marine mammals found in the above study area.
2) Determine if spatial distribution patterns of marine mammals are correlated with hydrographic features, such as, water depth, temperature or salinity, or with biological features, such as zooplankton distribution.

In addition to the sighting data, effort data was recorded every half hour or whenever conditions change.
This dataset, therefore, should be used with the effort data.

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
dataset	Dataset name
lineno	Line number
cruise	Cruise number designated by NEFSC
date	Date when the record was recorded
time	Time of the observation (local time)
latitude	Latitude in decimal degrees
longitude	Longitude in decimal degrees
species	Code of species sighted
common	Species common name.
tsn	ITIS Taxonomic Serial Number added by OBIS-SEAMAP
scientific	Species scientific name
group_	Group name the species belongs to
rank	Rank such as species, genus and family
herdsize	An estimate of the number of individuals.
transect	Transect no.
leg	Leg no.
excluded	For internal use
geom	Geometry field added by OBIS-SEAMAP
oid	Unique ID number (generated by OBIS-SEAMAP)