DUML surveys for the stock discrimination of bottlenose dolphins along the Outer Banks of North Carolina 2011-2012

Occurrence Observation
Latest version published by OBIS-SEAMAP on Oct 8, 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 57 records in English (11 KB) - Update frequency: not planned
Metadata as an EML file download in English (14 KB)
Metadata as an RTF file download in English (12 KB)

Description

Original provider: Duke University Marine Laboratory Dataset credits: Duke University Marine Laboratory Abstract: Four stocks of bottlenose dolphins (<i>Tursiops truncatus</i>) have been described in the waters of North Carolina: the Northern Migratory (NM); Southern Migratory (SM); Northern NC Estuarine System (NNCES); and Southern NC Estuarine System (SNCES) stocks (Waring et al. 2013). The two migratory stocks occur in coastal shelf waters, but dolphins from the two estuarine stocks also occur in near-shore coastal waters. During summer, dolphins from both the SM and NNCES stocks are vulnerable to by-catch in small-mesh gill nets set in coastal waters, primarily gill nets set for Spanish mackerel very close to shore along the Outer Banks. Little is currently known about the degree of overlap of dolphins from these two stocks along the Outer Banks, which hampers our ability to assess the true impact of these by-catches. In this research project we photographed and collected biopsy samples of bottlenose dolphins from both the SM and NNCES stocks in coastal waters along the Outer Banks during the summer and early autumn of 2011 and 2012. We sampled dolphins from both stocks to determine: (1) their distribution patterns; (2) the degree of overlap between NNCES and SM stocks; and (3) specifically, how far from shore the NNCES animals are found. Almost all of the groups we encountered were from the SM stock; we only encountered four groups of NNCES dolphins during these surveys. In general, estuarine animals were observed in relatively small groups, close to shore, in shallow water and in relatively close proximity to an inlet. Sighting and biopsy locations were significantly closer to shore (p=0.00278 and p=0.00091, respectively) and shallower (p=0.00117) for the NNCES stock than the SM stock. We note, however, that these conclusions should be tempered by the small sample of estuarine animals we observed. Nevertheless, all four sightings of estuarine dolphins occurred within 500-m of shore and in waters less than 4-m deep. The distribution of the two stocks overlapped in waters very close to shore, but we did not observe any estuarine groups beyond 500 m. from shore.<br><br> This work was funded by the North Carolina Sea Grant Bycatch Reduction Marine Mammal Project. This research was conducted under General Authorization Number 16185 from the NMFS held by Dr. Andrew Read, allowing the close approach to bottlenose dolphins for research purposes.<br><br> Reference: <a href="http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/sars/pdf/ao2012.pdf">Waring G.T., E. Josephson, K. Maze-Foley and P.E. Rosel (eds.) 2013. U.S. Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico Marine Mammal Stock Assessments – 2012.</a> Accessed 28 September 2013.

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 57 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:

Urian, K. 2013. DUML surveys for the stock discrimination of bottlenose dolphins along the Outer Banks of North Carolina 2011-2012. Version 1.0.0. Dataset published in OBIS-SEAMAP. https://doi.org/10.82144/9ff3d8a2.

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: fca29e62-2331-4860-abf8-8615d8328d52.  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; Occurrence

External data

The resource data is also available in other formats

OBIS-SEAMAP Dataset Page https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/1010 UTF-8 Interactive map
FGDC Metadata https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/1010/fgdc UTF-8 XML
EML Metadata https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/1010/eml UTF-8 XML

Contacts

Kim Urian
  • Owner
  • Originator
  • Point Of Contact
  • Primary contact
Duke University Marine Lab
OBIS-SEAMAP
  • Metadata Provider
  • Distributor
Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab, Duke University
  • A328 LSRC building
27708 Durham
NC
US

Geographic Coverage

Oceans

Bounding Coordinates South West [35.063, -75.975], North East [35.943, -75.429]

Taxonomic Coverage

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

Species Tursiops truncatus (Common bottlenose dolphin)

Temporal Coverage

Start Date / End Date 2011-07-01 / 2012-09-30

Project Data

No Description available

Title DUML surveys for the stock discrimination of bottlenose dolphins along the Outer Banks of North Carolina 2011-2012
Funding NA

The personnel involved in the project:

Kim Urian
  • Owner

Sampling Methods

NA

Study Extent NA

Method step description:

  1. NA

Collection Data

Collection Name zd_1010
Collection Identifier zd_1010
Parent Collection Identifier OBIS-SEAMAP

Additional Metadata

marine, harvested by iOBIS. One record did not have a group size estimate available, so "1" was used to be conservative and noted in the "Notes" column.