NMML Gulf of Alaska marine mammal survey 2003

National Marine Mammal Laboratory

Visual surveys for cetaceans were conducted in the Gulf of Alaska in association with a NOAA/Alaska Fisheries Science Center’s pollock stock assessment survey aboard the NOAA ship Miller Freeman from 26 June – 15 July 2003. Standard line-transect methods were used with three observers rotating through two 25x (Big Eye) binocular positions and one recorder on the flying bridge. Survey effort was conducted along the pollock survey transect lines, weather permitting. Additional effort was made while in transit to and from pollock survey waypoints. A total of 2,242 km of trackline were surveyed with 364 cetacean sightings (1,079 individuals). An additional 28 cetacean sightings were made (175 individuals) during off effort periods. Species included harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena), Dall’s porpoise (Phocoenoides dalli), Pacific white-sided dolphin (Lagenorhynchus obliquidens), killer whale (Orcinus orca), minke whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata), fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus), humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae), sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus), Baird’s beaked whale (Berardius bairdii), and Cuvier’s beaked whale (Ziphius cavirostris).

The primary purpose was to conduct a marine mammal survey as a piggyback project to the NOAA/AFSC acoustic pollock survey in the Gulf of Alaska around Kodiak Island and the Kenai Peninsula and use sighting data to estimate the abundance of and to describe the distribution of whales and porpoises in the survey area.

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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 (generated by SEAMAP)
recid	Record ID (generated by SEAMAP)
line	Line
dot	Dot (on/off effort)
code
obs_time	Time of observation
obs_date	Date of observation
latorigin	Original latitude
longorigin	Original longitude
dlat	Latitude (decimal degrees)
dlong	Longitude (decimal degrees)
effdist	Effort distance
onoff	On/off effort
transect	Transect number
beaufort	Beaufort sea state
swellht	Swell height
swelldir	Swell direction
temp	Temperature
windspeed	Wind speed
shipcourse	Ship course
shspeed	Ship speed
fograin	Fog/rain
horizsun
vertsun
winddir	Wind direction
visibility	Visibility
leftobs
recorder
rightobs
sightnum
sightobs
cue
sightcode
angle
reticle
radialdist
mmdir
mmspeed
spcode	Species code
sp_obs	Species observed
obs_count	Number of animals
sp_tsn	Species ITIS TSN
highgsiz
lowgsiz
latitude	Latitude of sighting
longitude	Longitude of sighting
perpdist	Perpendicular distance
distdtrack
comments	Comment 1
comments2	Comments 2
comments3	Comments 3
comments4	Comments 4