AMAPPS Southeast Aerial Cruise Winter 2015

NOAA Southeast Fisheries Science Center (SEFSC)

As part of the AMAPPS program, the Southeast Fisheries
Science Center conducts aerial surveys of continental
shelf waters along the US east coast from Cape Canaveral,
Florida to Cape May, New Jersey. The survey was conducted
during 2015 between 23 January and 3 March. It was
conducted along tracklines oriented perpendicular to the
shoreline that were latitudinally spaced 20 km apart
aboard a NOAA Twin Otter aircraft at an altitude of 600
feet (183 m) and a speed of 110 knots. The survey was
designed for analysis using Distance sampling and a two-
team (independent observer) approach to correct for
visibility bias in resulting abundance estimates.
The survey covered waters from Cape May, NJ to Cape
Canaveral, FL including “fine-scale” tracklines in waters
offshore of New Jersey. The majority of survey effort
occurred in waters from Cape Hatteras, NC and south. Due
to weather conditions during the survey, a few areas of
the study area were not surveyed.

The goal of the survey was to conduct line-transect surveys
using the Distance sampling approach to estimate the
abundance and spatial distribution of marine mammals and
turtles in waters over the continental shelf (shoreline to
200m isobaths) from Florida to New Jersey.

Perpendicular distance to the animal is not publicly
available.
The dataset is accompanied by transect (effort) data
which is provided as a separate file.
Data were further audited in 2018 since publication of
Annual Report in 2015.

Sightings included were detected on-effort by the forward
team only; you may request the full dataset and sightings
including opportunistic ones directly to the provider.

Environmental Attribute Codes
Beaufort Sea state
0 Calm, mirror like seas
1 Waves <1ft, rippled surface
2 Small wavelets (<2 ft), no white caps
3 Large wavelets (<3ft), scattered white caps
4 Swell 3-4 ft, numerous white caps
5 Swell >5 ft, many white caps, some spray
6 Swell >10 ft, white caps everywhere, spray
CloudCover
0 Clear
1 0-25% Cloudy
2 26-50% Cloudy
3 51-75% Cloudy
4 76-100% Cloudy
5 Overcast
Glare
0 No Glare
1 <10% of visual field
2 10-25% of visual field
3 25-50% of visual field
4 50-75% of visual field
5 >75% of visual field
Weather
0 Clear
1 Mist
2 Light Rain
3 Heavy Rain
Visibility
0 Clear
1 Good
2 Fair
3 Poor
Haze
0 No
1 Yes
Fog
0 No
1 Yes
Sun penetration (Sun pen)
0 Poor
1 Fair
2 Good
3 Excellent
Turbidity
0 Poor
1 Fair
2 Good
3 Excellent

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.
All attributes are included in the downloadable file (CSV or ESRI File Geodatabase) for "Complete Set of Dataset".

Attributes in dataset

Attribute (table column)	Description
oid	Unique ID number (generated by OBIS-SEAMAP)
effortid	Effort ID
oid_orig	OID assigned by provider
type	Type (Mammal or Turtle)
comname	Species common name
sp_tsn	Taxonomic Serial Number added by OBIS-SEAMAP
individualcount	Individual count
latitude	Latitude in decimal degrees
longitude	Longitude in decimal degrees
perpendiculardistance	Perpendicular distance to the animal
eventdate	Date and time of the sighting at local time
transect	Transect No.
beaufort	Beaufort sea state
cloudcover	Cloud cover code
glare	Glare cover code
weather	Weather code
visibility	Visibility code
haze	Haze presence
fog	Fog presence
sunpen	Sun penetration code
turbidity	Turbidity code
tripid	Trip ID
platformvlts	Always A (Airplane)
oneffort	Flag (Y/N) to indicate on effort.
observationheight	Altitude of aircraft in feet above sea level in feet
platformspeed	Speed of the platform in knots
sighttype	Sighting type ("F")
datasetid	Dataset ID by provider
datasetname	Dataset name by provider
eventdatetimezone	The time zone of the observation event (UTC)
geom	Geometry field added by OBIS-SEAMAP