Description
Original provider: Tethys Research Institute Dataset credits: Marina Costa, Amina Cesario, Maddalena Fumagalli & Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara, Tethys Research Institute Chris Smeenk Eritrea Project - Yohannes Mebrahtu IMMRAC Peter Rudolph Red Sea Dolphin Project - HEPCA Abstract: Based on a review of the literature, complemented by original observations at sea made by the authors during the past 34 years, the cetacean fauna in the Red Sea appears to be composed by a total of 16 species: three Mysticetes (Bryde’s whale, Balaenoptera edeni; Omura’s whale, B. omurai; and humpback whale, Megaptera novaeangliae) and 13 Odontocetes (dwarf sperm whale, Kogia sima; killer whale, Orcinus orca; false killer whale, Pseudorca crassidens; short-finned pilot whale, Globicephala macrorhynchus; Risso’s dolphin, Grampus griseus; Indian Ocean humpback dolphin, Sousa plumbea; rough-toothed dolphin, Steno bredanensis; Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin, Tursiops aduncus; common bottlenose dolphin, T. truncatus; pantropical spotted dolphin, Stenella attenuata; spinner dolphin, S. longirostris; striped dolphin, S. coeruleoalba; Indo-Pacific common dolphin, Delphinus delphis tropicalis). This review presents the very first documented and confirmed sightings of B. omurai, K. sima and S. bredanensis in the Red Sea. Of all the above species, however, only nine (Bryde’s whale, false killer whale, Risso’s dolphin, Indian Ocean humpback dolphin, Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin, common bottlenose dolphin, pantropical spotted dolphin, spinner dolphin, and Indo-Pacific common dolphin) appeared to occur regularly in the Red Sea, the remaining seven only occurring sporadically as vagrants from the Indian Ocean. Even regular species appeared not to be uniformly distributed throughout the Red Sea, e.g., with Indo-Pacific common dolphins mostly limited to the southern portion of the region, and the Gulf of Suez only hosting the two bottlenose dolphin species and Indian Ocean humpback dolphins. No convincing evidence was found of the Red Sea occurrence of two whale species mentioned in the literature: the common minke whale, Balaenoptera acutorostrata, and the sperm whale, Physeter macrocephalus. The absence from the region of deep diving species (e.g., Ziphiidae and the sperm whale) can be explained by the geomorphology of the Straits of Bab al Mandab, with its extended shallow sill likely to discourage incursions by such species into the Red Sea. The coordinated effort and the different expertise of the authors has contributed to amend previous mistakes and inaccuracies, verify and validate specimen identification, highlight features of relevance for species taxonomy and, most importantly, draw a fundamental baseline to inform conservation of cetaceans in the Red Sea. Purpose: To release updated information about cetacean species in the Red Sea and review existing information from published and grey literature. Supplemental information: Sighting records were collected from the data owners: Chris Smeenk Eritrea Project - Yohannes Mebrahtu Israel Marine Mammal Research & Assistance Center - IMMRAC Mia Elasar, Daphna Feingold, Oz Goffman, Nir Hadar, Dan Kerem, Aviad Scheinin Peter Rudolph Red Sea Dolphin Project - HEPCA This dataset incorporated the previously published dataset "IMMRAC marine mammal sightings from the Red Sea (http://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/1145)". Temporal resolution varies per record. Time values are not available. "tprecision" column is added to indicate the resolution.
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 889 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:
Notarbartolo di Sciara G., Kerem D., Smeenk C., Rudolph P., Cesario A., Costa M., Elasar M., Feingold D., Fumagalli M., Goffman O., Hadar N., Mebrathu Y.T., Scheinin A. 2017. Cetaceans of the Red Sea. CMS Technical Series 33. 86p.
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: 0e448783-fb63-4086-b02f-9d1ff4938999. OBIS-SEAMAP publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Ocean Biodiversity Information System.
Keywords
Occurrence,Marine Animal Survey,Marine Biology,Marine mammals,Visual Sighting,Vessel; Observation; Occurrence
External data
The resource data is also available in other formats
OBIS-SEAMAP Dataset Page | http://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/1540 UTF-8 Interactive map |
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FGDC Metadata | http://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/1540/xml UTF-8 XML |
Contacts
- Owner ●
- Originator ●
- Point Of Contact
- Metadata Provider ●
- Distributor
Geographic Coverage
Red Sea,Egypt,Sudan,Eritrea,Yemen,Saudi Arabia,Israel,Gulf,Suez,Aqaba
Bounding Coordinates | South West [11.667, 32.3], North East [31.166, 44.067] |
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Taxonomic Coverage
Scientific names are based on the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS).
Genus | Balaenoptera (baleen whales), Stenella (spinner dolphins), Tursiops (bottlenose dolphins) |
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Species | Balaenoptera edeni (Eden's whale), Balaenoptera omurai (Omurai's Whale), Globicephala macrorhynchus (Short-finned Pilot Whale), Grampus griseus (Risso's Dolphin), Megaptera novaeangliae (Humpback Whale), Orcinus orca (Killer Whale), Pseudorca crassidens (False Killer Whale), Sousa chinensis (Chinese white dolphin), Stenella attenuata (Pantropical Spotted Dolphin), Stenella coeruleoalba (Striped Dolphin), Stenella longirostris (Spinner Dolphin), Tursiops aduncus (Indian Ocean bottlenose dolphin), Tursiops truncatus (Common Bottlenose Dolphin) |
Subspecies | Delphinus capensis tropicalis (Indo-Pacific common dolphin) |
Temporal Coverage
Start Date / End Date | 1984-06-09 / 2017-01-01 |
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Project Data
No Description available
Title | Red Sea Cetacean Review - Sightings |
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Funding | NA |
The personnel involved in the project:
- Owner
- Originator
Sampling Methods
NA
Study Extent | NA |
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Method step description:
- NA
Collection Data
Collection Name | zd_1540 |
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Collection Identifier | zd_1540 |
Parent Collection Identifier | OBIS-SEAMAP |
Additional Metadata
marine, harvested by iOBIS
Purpose | To release updated information about cetacean species in the Red Sea and review existing information from published and grey literature. |
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Alternative Identifiers | http://ipt.env.duke.edu/resource?r=zd_1540 |