Inshore boat-based cetacean Survey 2012

Published by: Department of Housing, Local Government, and Heritage

Licensed under: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

Category: Environment

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A single platform line-transect survey using distance sampling was carried out off the north coast of Ireland on 9 August 2012. Sea conditions were excellent throughout the survey with 100% of survey effort carried out in sea-state ≤3 and 63.5% in sea-state ≤1. A total of 178 km of track-line was surveyed in 654 minutes (10.9 hrs). Five acoustic events were logged during the survey: three harbour porpoise records and one each of common dolphin and Risso’s dolphin. All acoustic events were recorded concurrent with visual sightings. Thus most (77%) of the harbour porpoise sightings and all minke whale sightings obtained during the survey were not detected acoustically. A total of 33 sightings were recorded comprising 158 individuals among five marine mammal species, which suggests good species diversity in the area at this time of year. These included 11 harbour porpoise sightings, one sighting of a large group of common dolphins, two sightings of Risso’s dolphins and six sightings of single minke whales.

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Theme	Environment
Date released	2022-07-08
Date updated	2023-11-20
Dataset conforms to these standards	The INSPIRE Directive or INSPIRE lays down a general framework for a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) for the purposes of European Community environmental policies and policies or activities which may have an impact on the environment.
Rights notes	{http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/,"Copyright Government of Ireland. This dataset was created by National Parks and Wildlife Service, Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. This copyright material is licensed for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",otherRestrictions}
Update frequency	Other
Language	English
Geographic coverage in GeoJSON format	{"type":"Polygon","coordinates":[[[-10.650444030762, 50.807923689449],[-10.650444030762, 55.993470564449], [-5.289115905762, 55.993470564449], [-5.289115905762, 50.807923689449], [-10.650444030762, 50.807923689449]]]}
Spatial Reference Systems (SRS)	WGS 84 (EPSG:4326)
Vertical Extent	{"verticalDomainName": "EPSG Projection 5731 - Malin Head height", "minVerticalExtent": "0", "maxVerticalExtent": "1014"}
Provenance information	During the line-transect survey the position of the survey vessel was tracked continuously through a GPS receiver fed directly into a laptop while survey effort, including environmental conditions (sea-state, wind strength and direction, glare etc.) were recorded directly onto LOGGER software (IFAW) every 15 minutes. When a sighting was made the position of the vessel was recorded immediately and the angle of the sighting from the track of the vessel and the radial distance of the sighting from the vessel were recorded. These data were communicated to the recorder in the wheelhouse via two-way VHF radio. The angle was recorded to the nearest degree via an angle board attached to the vessel immediately in front of each observer. Accurate distance estimation is essential for distance sampling. Distance sticks were made for observers using the Heinemann Equation (Heinemann 1981) which were used to aid distance estimation. Some data was modified to comply with GDPR legislation and open data publication guidelines.
Period of time covered (begin)	2012-08-01
Period of time covered (end)	2012-10-01