Mingan Island Cetacean Study 84-07

Occurrence Observation
Latest version published by OBIS-SEAMAP on Oct 7, 2025 OBIS-SEAMAP

Download the latest version of this resource data as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) or the resource metadata as EML or RTF:

Data as a DwC-A file download 4,899 records in English (381 KB) - Update frequency: not planned
Metadata as an EML file download in English (21 KB)
Metadata as an RTF file download in English (13 KB)

Description

Original provider: Richard Sears, Mingan Island Cetacean Study Dataset credits: Richard Sears, Mingan Island Cetacean Study Abstract: The sightings contained in this dataset were obtained during surveys designed to photo-identify blue whales in the Sea of Cortez during their peak abundance in February and March. The surveys were conducted between 1984 and 2007 from 25' fiberglass boats in sea state less than 3-4 and designed to maximize the number of blue whale IDs. Although focusing primarily on the areas where blue whales are most commonly sighted, they also covered most of the area accessible by boat during a day trip at least once per field season. Any marine mammal sighting was recorded using cross-bearings from 1984 to 1991 and using GPS from 1992 on. Unusual bird and fish sightings were also recorded.

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 4,899 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:

Delarue, J. 2014. Mingan Island Cetacean Study 84-07. Version 1.4.0. Dataset published in OBIS-SEAMAP. https://doi.org/10.82144/1c988d78.

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 (CC-BY 4.0) License.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 85bb9817-fe01-4f6d-8ad1-3b861a7cec61.  OBIS-SEAMAP publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Ocean Biodiversity Information System.

Keywords

Occurrence; Observation; Marine Biology; Visual sighting; Vessels; Sightings; Blue whale - Marine mammals - sightings; Occurrence

External data

The resource data is also available in other formats

OBIS-SEAMAP Dataset Page https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/460 UTF-8 Interactive map
FGDC Metadata https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/460/fgdc UTF-8 XML
EML Metadata https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/460/eml UTF-8 XML

Contacts

Julien Delarue
  • Owner
  • Originator
  • Point Of Contact
  • Primary contact
Allied Whale, College of the Atlantic
OBIS-SEAMAP
  • Metadata Provider
  • Distributor
Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab, Duke University
  • A328 LSRC building
27708 Durham
NC
US

Geographic Coverage

Oceans,Sea of Cortez - Loreto

Bounding Coordinates South West [22.913, -112.35], North East [26.921, -106.487]

Taxonomic Coverage

Scientific names are based on the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS).

Family Cheloniidae (Sea turtles), Delphinidae (Dolphins)
Genus Balaenoptera (Baleen whales), Sphyrna (Bonnethead sharks)
Species Balaenoptera edeni (Eden's whale), Balaenoptera musculus (Blue whale), Balaenoptera physalus (Fin whale), Cyanea capillata (Lion's mane), Delphinus delphis (Short-beaked common dolphin), Eschrichtius robustus (Gray whale), Globicephala macrorhynchus (Short-finned pilot whale), Globicephala melas (Long-finned pilot whale), Haematopus palliatus (American oystercatcher), Kogia breviceps (Pygmy sperm whale), Kogia sima (Dwarf sperm whale), Lagenorhynchus obliquidens (Pacific white-sided dolphin), Larus heermanni (Heermann's gull), Larus livens (Yellow-footed gull), Manta birostris (Atlantic manta), Megaptera novaeangliae (Humpback whale), Oceanodroma melania (Black storm petrel), Orcinus orca (Killer whale), Pandion haliaetus (Osprey), Pelecanus occidentalis (Brown pelican), Phaethon lepturus (White-tailed tropicbird), Physeter macrocephalus (Sperm whale), Pseudorca crassidens (False killer whale), Sula leucogaster (Brown booby), Sula nebouxii (Blue-footed booby), Tursiops truncatus (Common bottlenose dolphin), Zalophus californianus (California sea lion)

Temporal Coverage

Start Date / End Date 1984-03-24 / 2007-03-26

Project Data

No Description available

Title Mingan Island Cetacean Study 84-07
Funding NA

The personnel involved in the project:

Julien Delarue
  • Owner

Sampling Methods

NA

Study Extent NA

Method step description:

  1. NA

Collection Data

Collection Name zd_460
Collection Identifier zd_460
Parent Collection Identifier OBIS-SEAMAP

Additional Metadata

marine, harvested by iOBIS. The sightings of Balaenoptera edeni were recognized as Bryde's whale by the data provider. The ITIS taxonomy database gives it the common name of Eden's whale. Thus, in our system it shows Eden's whale instead of Bryde's whale as a common name. There may seem to be duplicated records in the dataset. However, records are different, near-by sightings (within 100-200 m) recorded while the researchers were conducting photo-ID activities and for which an exact position could not be obtained. Thus, their positions were approximated as that of the animal/group the researchers were working with at that time. The records without coordinates were removed.