University of Valencia cetacean surveys in the Spanish Mediterranean 2000-2003

Juan Antonio Raga, Marine Zoology Unit, University of Valencia

The study area comprised the waters of the Valencia and Murcia Regions (central Spanish Mediterranean), from the coastline to between 30 to 80 km offshore, with depths ranging from 10 m to 2,800 m. Seasonal line transect surveys were conducted from June 2000 to March 2003. Transects followed a systematic saw-tooth pattern that covered the area representatively (Buckland et al. 2001). The fieldwork platform was a high-wing aircraft (“push-pull” Cessna 337) flying at an altitude of 152 m (500 ft) and at a groundspeed of approximately 166 km/h (90 knots). Two observers, positioned on each side of the aircraft, scanned the sea surface and a recorder took note of data reported: species, number of animals, location (obtained from a GPS), time, and environmental conditions, including Beaufort sea state. Environmental conditions were updated whenever changes occurred and GPS provided a continuous record of position (updated every few seconds). Surveys were conducted only in good sighting conditions of Beaufort sea state less than 3.

Seasonal aerial surveys were conducted in central Spanish Mediterranean waters from 2000 to 2003 to obtain information on the distribution of cetacean species with the aim of delimiting marine protected areas (MPAs) for their conservation.

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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 (created by OBIS-SEAMAP)
rec	Record number
latitude	Latitude of observation
longitude	Longitude of observation
originlat	Original latitude
originlong	Original longitude
obs_date	Date of observation
obs_time	Time of observation
groupsz	Group size
obs_count	Number of animals
sp_obs	Species observed
sp_tsn	Species ITIS TSN
dataown	Data owner
org	Organization
notes	Notes of when time was not available and "00:00:00" was used; when range was recorded for group size and minimum number of used; when group size was not available and "1" was used