Description
Original provider: Andrew DiMatteo, US Navy Dataset credits: Kevin Foss, Christopher Newport University; U.S. Department of the Navy Abstract: The Elizabeth River is bounded almost totally by industrial, urban, suburban, commercial shipping and military facilities. Tidal in nature, the river has low flow, resulting in heavy contamination loads. The population studied is the Northern Migratory Stock of the US Atlantic coast, appearing in this area from May through November. Standard small boat, focal group follow, passive observation techniques were used, along with photography of individuals. Data on location, group size estimates, activities observed and relevant environmental observations were recorded every five minutes. The dolphins appear as individuals or pairs in April and May, with group size increasing in June to a peak mean of 29 animals sighted per encounter. Group size then decreases in October and November. Probability of encountering dolphins ranges from 0% during the winter and early spring to over 80% in July, tapering off towards fall. Activity patterns show greatest diversity in July and August, with travel constituting the main activity early and late. Despite a peak of births in the area in May-June, there is little mating until July, with the incidence of sexual activity peaking in September. Purpose: To better understand the seasonality and behavior of bottlenose dolphins in the lower Chesapeake Bay. Data were originally collected by Mr. Kevin Foss at Christopher Newport University during field seasons from 2000-2006. Data were subsequently acquired by the U.S. Navy in 2013. Supplemental information: [2015-03-24] A few records had a wrong animal count of zero. The value is replaced with a blank representing species presence only. These data are the result of small boat transects with focal group follows, so that sightings were recorded at regular intervals. Therefore, there may be sightings of the same individuals at different times. Records that originally estimated a range for the number of adults were attributed with the median number to be conservative. Three records on land were excluded.
Data Records
The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 998 records.
This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.
Versions
The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.
How to cite
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
DiMatteo, A. 2014. Christopher Newport University bottlenose dolphin sightings in Virginia estuaries 2000-2006. Data downloaded from OBIS-SEAMAP (http://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/1074) on yyyy-mm-dd.
Rights
Researchers should respect the following rights statement:
The publisher and rights holder of this work is OBIS-SEAMAP. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC 4.0) License.
GBIF Registration
This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 8753a2c6-eafc-49d5-879d-eed5e5258656. OBIS-SEAMAP publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Ocean Biodiversity Information System.
Keywords
Occurrence,Vessels,Sightings; Observation; Occurrence
External data
The resource data is also available in other formats
| OBIS-SEAMAP Dataset Page | http://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/1074 UTF-8 Interactive map |
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| FGDC Metadata | http://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/1074/xml UTF-8 XML |
Contacts
- Owner ●
- Originator ●
- Point Of Contact
- Metadata Provider ●
- Distributor
Geographic Coverage
Oceans
| Bounding Coordinates | South West [36.746, -76.457], North East [36.98, -76.106] |
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Taxonomic Coverage
Scientific names are based on the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS).
| Species | Tursiops truncatus (Common Bottlenose Dolphin) |
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Temporal Coverage
| Start Date / End Date | 2000-07-10 / 2006-07-25 |
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Project Data
No Description available
| Title | Christopher Newport University bottlenose dolphin sightings in Virginia estuaries 2000-2006 |
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| Funding | NA |
The personnel involved in the project:
- Owner
Sampling Methods
NA
| Study Extent | NA |
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Method step description:
- NA
Collection Data
| Collection Name | zd_1074 |
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| Collection Identifier | zd_1074 |
| Parent Collection Identifier | OBIS-SEAMAP |
Additional Metadata
marine, harvested by iOBIS
| Purpose | To better understand the seasonality and behavior of bottlenose dolphins in the lower Chesapeake Bay. Data were originally collected by Mr. Kevin Foss at Christopher Newport University during field seasons from 2000-2006. Data were subsequently acquired by the U.S. Navy in 2013. |
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| Alternative Identifiers | http://ipt.env.duke.edu/resource?r=zd_1074 |