All scientific data collected by the Australian Antarctic program (AAp) are eventually described in the Catalogue of Australian Antarctic and Subantarctic Metadata (CAASM). CAASM can be used to search through AAp data descriptions, and it also provides links to access publicly available datasets, which can either be immediately downloaded or obtained from the Australian Antarctic Data Centre (AADC).
A major goal of a research expedition by the Australian Antarctic Division over the summer of (2003/04) in the Southern Ocean off Heard Island was to answer some of the questions needed to determine what level of exploitation of Southern Ocean fisheries is sustainable. The use of novel equipment, cutting edge technology and some adept logistical co-ordination allowed the Aurora Australis, on the Southern Ocean, to catch the prey of the predators of Heard Island.
This work was accomplished by placing satellite trackers on animals at Heard Island, and then, using the ARGOS system, monitoring their activities in the Southern Ocean around the island. The Aurora Australis assisted in the monitoring and tracking of the animals by searching the areas the animals were foraging for prey species.
The animals tracked in this experiment were:
Light-mantled sooty albatrosses
black-browed albatrosses
king penguins
macaroni penguins
Antarctic fur seals
The columns in this data file are:
individual_id - the identifier of the individual animal
species - the species name of that animal
pttid - the identifier of the PTT tracker deployed on that animal
deployment_longitude - the longitude at which the tracker was deployed
deployment_latitude - the latitude at which the tracker was deployed
observation_date - the date (ISO8601 format) of the position observation
year, month, day, time, time_zone - as per the observation_date, but in separate columns
locationclass - the ARGOS location class of the position (see http://www.argos-system.org/manual/3-location/34_location_classes.htm; value -3 corresponds to a "Z" class, value -2 to "B", value -1 to "A")
latitude - the latitude of the position observation
longitude - the longitude of the position observation
These data are publicly available for download from the provided URL.
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=HI_animaltracks_ARGOS when using these data.