1. Australian Antarctic Data Centre
2. Discover and Manage Data
3. Records
4. AAS_4102_photoID2013

Description

An excel spreadsheet detailing best left and/or right photos of individual Antarctic blue and New Zealand blue whales identified and photographed during the Antarctic blue whale voyage 2013. Also included are all the best photos as jpegs. Date is UTC and quality codes for each photo are 1=excellent, 2=good, 3=fair, 4=poor.

For further detail please see references:

Olson P.A., Ensor P., Olavarria C., Schmitt N., Childerhouse S., Constantine R., Miller B.S., Double M.C. (2013) New Zealand blue whales: initial photo-identification of a little-known population, International Whaling Commission Scientific Committee meeting (SC65a), Jeju Island, Korea, June 2013 SC/65a/SH12

Olson, P.A., Ensor, P., Schmitt, N., Olavarria, C. and Double, M.C. 2013 Photo-identification of Antarctic blue whales during the SORP Antarctic Blue Whale Voyage 2013. Paper submitted for consideration by the IWC Scientific Committee. SC/65a/SH11.

See http://www.marinemammals.gov.au/sorp/antarctic-blue-whale-project for further detail regarding the Antarctic blue whale voyage.

Purpose

Individual blue whales are identifiable from unique patterns of mottled pigment on both sides of the body, and also from variations in dorsal fin shape and any permanent scars that may be present. Individual identification allows the production of sightings histories required for a mark-recapture approach to estimating abundance. These data will also provide information on blue whale population structure and movement.

The IWC Southern Ocean Research Partnership has developed guidelines to enable the photo identification of blue whales. These guidelines can be found here: http://www.marinemammals.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/141482/Blue_photoID_guide_2014.3.pdf

Access

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

Temporal Coverages

• Start date: 2013-01-30 - Stop date: 2013-03-17

Spatial Coverages

Science Keywords

• EARTH SCIENCE > BIOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION > ANIMALS/VERTEBRATES > MAMMALS > CETACEANS
• EARTH SCIENCE > BIOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION > ANIMALS/VERTEBRATES > MAMMALS > CETACEANS
• EARTH SCIENCE > SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING > VISIBLE WAVELENGTHS > VISIBLE IMAGERY

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_photoID2013 when using these data.