Christopher Newport University bottlenose dolphin sightings in Virginia estuaries 2000-2006

Occurrence Observation
Latest version published by OBIS-SEAMAP on Oct 8, 2025 OBIS-SEAMAP

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Data as a DwC-A file download 997 records in English (76 KB) - Update frequency: not planned
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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.

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 997 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. Version 1.5.0. Dataset published in OBIS-SEAMAP. https://doi.org/10.82144/0e2501e2.

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; 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/1074 UTF-8 Interactive map
FGDC Metadata https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/1074/fgdc UTF-8 XML
EML Metadata https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/1074/eml UTF-8 XML

Contacts

Andrew DiMatteo
  • Owner
  • Originator
  • Point Of Contact
  • Primary contact
US Dept. of the Navy Naval Facilities Engineering Command Atlantic
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 [36.746, -76.457], North East [36.98, -76.106]

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 2000-07-10 / 2006-07-25

Project Data

No Description available

Title Christopher Newport University bottlenose dolphin sightings in Virginia estuaries 2000-2006
Funding NA

The personnel involved in the project:

Andrew DiMatteo
  • Owner

Sampling Methods

NA

Study Extent NA

Method step description:

  1. NA

Collection Data

Collection Name zd_1074
Collection Identifier zd_1074
Parent Collection Identifier OBIS-SEAMAP

Bibliographic Citations

  1. Foss, K.M. and J.R. Reed. 2006. Utilization of urbanized estuaries by northern migratory coastal stock of bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus in Virginia, USA. Poster Presentation.

Additional Metadata

marine, harvested by iOBIS. 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.

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.

Alternative Identifiers https://doi.org/10.82144/0e2501e2
https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/1074
https://www.gbif.org/dataset/8753a2c6-eafc-49d5-879d-eed5e5258656
https://obis.org/dataset/fb24e556-9973-4903-9d6e-b429d5c12694
8753a2c6-eafc-49d5-879d-eed5e5258656
https://ipt.env.duke.edu/resource?r=zd_1074