Marine surveys (at sea and 16 ports) of Atlantic seabirds, passerines and marine mammals during Semester at Sea cruise fall 2014

Abstract

This data set was collected during the Fall 2014 cruise with Semester at Sea (SAS). It covers 2 MS Excel files of marine species surveys (three worksheets: opportunistic 5 minutes, and Distance Sampling 10 minutes, Individual Sightings) as well as harbour species surveys (one file with one worksheet). The SAS cruise of fall 2014 took place in the Atlantic, southern Baltic, the Mediterrean and Caribbean Seas and has the following bounding box coordinates (decimal degrees of latitude and longitude WGS 1984): Highest latitude 59.88929 North, lowest latitude -22.28687 South, most western longitude -81.80984, most eastern longitude -40.91894. The following 16 ports were covered: Southampton (UK), St. Petersburg (Russia), Gdansk (Poland), Rostock (Germany), Antwerp (Belgium), Le Havre (France), Dublin (Ireland), Lisbon (Portugal), Cadiz (Spain), Casablanca (Morocco), Citivecchia (Italy), Barcelona (Spain), Rio De Janeiro (Brazil), Salvador (Brazil), Bridgetown (Barbados), Havanna (Cuba) and Fort Lauderdale (Florida US). The starting date was August 21st and the ending date was Dec 7th 2014. The cruise included app. 632 students and 380 staff and crew (including professors). This dataset includes data from opportunistic 5 minute surveys ('presence only'), as well as 10minute long Distance Sampling surveys (abundances) done 2-3 times per day. All data are geo-referenced. In addition, many additional individual sigthings by the shipboard community and local excursion (terrestrial) data are also included, photos were collected whenever possible. Additional data like state of the ocean, plastic pollution, vessels in view, and weather were also collected. This data set can serve as a basic quantitative large-scale snapshot for the Atlantic region and its ecosystem in fall 2014. The 5 minute-long opportunistic at-sea surveys featured app 102 species; more species were detected in the other surveys. Most of these species are seabirds, with a few mamrine mammals, squid, fish sightings etc. Noteworthy are the high ocurrences of passerines at sea! This dataset has maximum 29 columns, and 314 rows (5 minute Opportunistic Survey), 146 rows (10min abundance surveys) and 271 rows (Individual Opportunistic Sightings); it is <1MB in size. A few photos exist and can be obtained upon request.