1. Australian Antarctic Data Centre
2. Discover and Manage Data
3. Records
4. AAS_4102_Visobs2015

Description

The ‘Logger’ data entry system was developed by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and is a flexible system to record information during a voyage. All events occurring during daylight operations such as sightings, biopsy attempts and sonobuoy deployments were recorded in a customized data entry program Logger along with weather and effort data.

The logger access database contains all data collected throughout the NZ/Aus Antarctic Ecosystems Voyage 2015 related to:
Biopsy events (date/time in UTC, success, sample number, reaction, attempts, dart recovery, notes)
Comments - time stamped (UTC) with GPS index providing additional detail
Observer effort (effort status, event, number of observers and locations, ship guide and data logger)
Environmental observations (sightability, sea state, swell, weather, cloud cover, visibility, intensity, glare, ice, sea surface temperature)
GPS data - time indexed NMEA feed, also containing heading and ship speed
Lookup - table containing topic codes describing the codes that appear in all other tables
Cetacean sightings and resightings (date/time in UTC), sighting number, sighting platform, estimate distance, binocular reticles, angle, species, sighting cue, heading, estimate of number of individuals, observer of sighting, behaviour, pod compaction, comments)
Sonobuoy deployments (date/time in UTC, sonobuoy number, notes)

Purpose

Systematic sightings data including quantified effort, environmental co-variates that may affect detection probability and initial locations relative to the vessel of all sightings were collected whenever possible. These data have the potential to contribute to analyses of the following:
(i) Distribution patterns and localised density of other baleen whale species (humpback, fin and minke whales) with respect to aggregations of blue whales and other co-variates such as distance from ice edge;
(ii) Blue whales that were seen but not heard provide data on acoustic detection probability;
(iii) Spatial scale and density of blue whales within aggregations including comparisons with acoustic data and average group size; and
(iv) Comparisons of observed locations of fin and humpback whales with bearings of vocalisations heard on sonobuoys to enable better descriptions of the acoustic repertoire of these species in the Southern Ocean.

Access

These data are publicly available for download from the provided URL.

Temporal Coverages

• Start date: 2015-01-29 - Stop date: 2015-03-11

Spatial Coverages

Science Keywords

• EARTH SCIENCE > BIOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION > ANIMALS/VERTEBRATES > MAMMALS > CETACEANS
• EARTH SCIENCE > BIOSPHERE > ECOLOGICAL DYNAMICS > ECOSYSTEM FUNCTIONS

Use Constraints

This dataset has been collected under the International Whaling Commission’s (IWC) Southern Ocean Research Partnership (SORP). The IWC-SORP ethos is one of open collaboration, communication and data sharing. The Data User will acknowledge the use of the IWC SORP dataset by the following statement:
Data provided by the International Whaling Commission’s Southern Ocean Research Partnership were all based upon non-lethal samples collected under a protocol approved by the Australian Antarctic Program Animal Ethics Committee (AAPAEC). These data were provided by the Partnership for the purpose of collaborative investigation.

This data set conforms to the CCBY Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Please follow instructions listed in the citation reference provided at http://data.aad.gov.au/aadc/metadata/citation.cfm?entry_id=AAS_4102_Visobs2015 when using these data.