BOEM Sperm Whale Seismic Study (SWSS) S-Tag Argos Telemetry

Texas A&M University
Oregon State University
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Texas A&M University-Galveston
University of Colorado
University of Durham
University of Saint Andrews
University of South Florida
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Sperm Whale Seismic Study (SWSS) was a multi-institutional, interdisciplinary research project supported by the then Minerals Management Service (MMS; now Bureau of Ocean Energy Management - BOEM) under Cooperative Agreement 1435-01-02-CA-85186 for Cooperative Research on Sperm Whales and their Response to Seismic Exploration in the Gulf of Mexico through the Texas A&M Research Foundation.

The objectives of SWSS were to
(1) establish baseline information on the biology and behavior of sperm whales in the northern Gulf of Mexico,
(2) characterize sperm whale habitat use in the northern Gulf of Mexico, and
(3) determine possible changes in behavior of sperm whales when subjected to manmade noise, particularly from seismic airgun arrays used for offshore oil and gas exploration and geological monitoring.

not provided

The base of this dataset is ARGOS telemetry location data that were deployed in S-Tag cruises in 2002-2005. The TagID (PTT#) and PhotoID, if available, were used to associate additional attributes such as biopsy and fin images with individual animals. These attributes will be released upon data provider's permission.

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)
tagid	Telemetry device ID: First two digits are the field season last five digits are the PTT (Platform Transmiter Terminal) number
date	Date reported from ARGOS
time	Time reported from ARGOS in UTC
latitude	Latitude in decimal degrees
longitude	Longitude in decimal degrees
loc_class	ARGOS Location Class
messages	Number of radio transmissions received by the ARGOS satellite
satellite	Satellite in the ARGOS constellation that received the tag transmission
deployment	Indicate if the record is the deployment location/date.
biopsy	Indicate if biopsy sample was taken upon deployment or later or before.
sp_tsn	Taxonomic Serial Number added by OBIS-SEAMAP
obs_count	#animal. Always 1
sample_num	Biopsy Sample Number
genetic_num	Whale
age_class	Age class from biopsy
body_length	Estimated bodh length
sex	Sex
haplotype	Haplotype
photo_id	Photo ID
image_path_namscimages	Image file name
image_path_photo_id_images	Image file name
image_path	Image file name
resources	Internal use; Added by OBIS-SEAMAP
geom	geometry added by OBIS-SEAMAP