IMMRAC marine mammal sightings from the Mediterranean's Levantine Basin

Nir Hadar, Oz Goffman, Aviad Scheinin and Dani Kerem, Israel Marine Mammal Research and Assistance Center (IMMRAC)

IMMRAC is a purely voluntary registered nonprofit organization dedicated to the conservation of cetacean populations in the Eastern Mediterranean and in the noethern Red Sea, through scientific research and public education. IMMRAC is a partner of ACCOBAMS. Research activities are under the academic auspices of the Institute for Maritime Studies, School of Marine Sciences in the University of Haifa. Open Sea research activity along the 190 km-long Israeli Mediterranean coast is conducted throughout the year, weather permitting. It focuses on the socio-ecology of the resident bottlenose dolphin population through half-day surveys from inflatable boats and private yachts. Due to logistic reasons, open sea research in the Red Sea is opportunistic and sporadic.

IMMRAC collates shore-based and boat-based cetacean sightings, the latter from dedicated surveys as well as from platforms of opportunity, made by its own staff or reported to it by other parties. The latter are mostly backed by photographs/videos or else, are indisputably accredited through careful interrogation by IMMRAC experts in real time and/or soon after the sighting, aided by a pictorial guide.

[2014-03-27] Sightings in 2012-2014 were appended. The activity column was added in this period whereas the seastate and comments columns were not provided.

Some records had estimates, minimums, or ranges for group sizes - these were converted to numbers, minimum + 1, or the median number (rounded down), respectively, for the number of animals observed.

The dataset has been updated over time as outlined below. Each entry includes the version number, release date, type of change, and a short description.

Overview

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Attributes described below represent those in the original dataset provided by the provider.
Only minimum required attributes are visible and downloadable online. Other attributes may be obtained upon provider's permission.

Attributes in dataset

Attribute (table column)	Description
oid	Unique ID number (added by OBIS-SEAMAP)
sp_obs	Species observed
sp_tsn	ITIS Taxonomic Serial Number added by OBIS-SEAMAP
obs_date	Date of observation
obs_time	Time of the observation (local time zone)
latitude	Latitude in decimal degrees
longitude	Longitude in decimal degrees
group_size_org	Group size in original format (including ranges, minimum etc in text)
obs_count	estimated group size
calves_presence	Calves presence
activity	Activity (since 2012 data)
seastate	Sea state (not provided since 2012)
comments	Comments (not provided since 2012)
geom	Geometry field added by OBIS-SEAMAP