PIFSC, Cetacean Survey, MACS 2021, Cruise 2102, NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center

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 78 records in English (15 KB) - Update frequency: not planned
Metadata as an EML file download in English (19 KB)
Metadata as an RTF file download in English (14 KB)

Description

Original provider: NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC) Dataset credits: NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center Abstract: In summer 2021, the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center conducted a comprehensive line-transect survey for cetaceans and seabirds within the United States exclusive economic zones of Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. MACS 2021 sailed for 59 days at sea aboard the NOAA Ship Oscar Elton Sette in May–July, 2021, and surveyed 8,711.7 km of trackline. There were 77 cetacean sightings of at least 12 species.

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 78 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:

Hill, M. 2023. PIFSC, Cetacean Survey, MACS 2021, Cruise 2102, NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center. Version 1.1.0. Dataset published in OBIS-SEAMAP. https://doi.org/10.82144/3c5c9a9f.

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is OBIS-SEAMAP. To the extent possible under law, the publisher has waived all rights to these data and has dedicated them to the Public Domain (CC0 1.0). Users may copy, modify, distribute and use the work, including for commercial purposes, without restriction.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 4a9f6d0a-e993-4603-9cc3-a60a15860370.  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; Marine Animal Survey; Marine mammals; Visual Sighting; Vessel; Occurrence

External data

The resource data is also available in other formats

OBIS-SEAMAP Dataset Page https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/2240 UTF-8 Interactive map
FGDC Metadata https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/2240/fgdc UTF-8 XML
EML Metadata https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/2240/eml UTF-8 XML

Contacts

Marie C. Hill
  • Owner
  • Originator
  • Point Of Contact
  • Primary contact
NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center
OBIS-SEAMAP
  • Metadata Provider
  • Distributor
Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab, Duke University
  • A328 LSRC building
27708 Durham
NC
US

Geographic Coverage

Oceans,Guam,Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands

Bounding Coordinates South West [11.091, 141.6], North East [23.029, 149.003]

Taxonomic Coverage

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

Order Cetacea (Cetaceans)
Family Balaenopteridae (Rorquals), Delphinidae (Dolphins)
Genus Balaenoptera (Baleen whales), Mesoplodon (Beaked whales)
Species Feresa attenuata (Pygmy killer whale), Globicephala macrorhynchus (Short-finned pilot whale), Indopacetus pacificus (Longman's beaked whale), Kogia sima (Dwarf sperm whale), Physeter macrocephalus (Sperm whale), Pseudorca crassidens (False killer whale), Stenella attenuata (Pantropical spotted dolphin), Stenella coeruleoalba (Striped dolphin), Stenella longirostris (Spinner dolphin), Steno bredanensis (Rough-toothed dolphin), Tursiops truncatus (Common bottlenose dolphin), Ziphius cavirostris (Cuvier's beaked whale)

Temporal Coverage

Start Date / End Date 2021-05-09 / 2021-07-13

Project Data

No Description available

Title PIFSC, Cetacean Survey, MACS 2021, Cruise 2102, NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center
Funding NA

The personnel involved in the project:

Marie C. Hill
  • Owner

Sampling Methods

NA

Study Extent NA

Method step description:

  1. NA

Collection Data

Collection Name zd_2240
Collection Identifier zd_2240
Parent Collection Identifier OBIS-SEAMAP

Bibliographic Citations

  1. Yano KM, Hill MC, Oleson EM, McCullough JLK, and Henry AE. 2022. Cetacean and seabird data collected during the Mariana Archipelago Cetacean Survey (MACS), May–July 2021. U.S. Department of Commerce, NOAA Technical Memorandum NOAA-TM-NMFS-PIFSC-128: 59 p. https://doi.org/10.25923/7pbh-zq68

Additional Metadata

marine, harvested by iOBIS. Data were collected under NMFS permit 20311. The data included here are the sightings and on-effort tracks recorded within WinCruz survey software and extracted from the QA/QC'd DAS file using the R package swfscDAS (https://smwoodman.github.io/swfscDAS). Attributes for fields within the trackline files: Cruise - see description in attribute table below segnum - segment number for continuous on-effort line Date - Local date m/dd/yyyy TimeStart - Local time at start of on-effort segment LatStart - Latitude in decimal degrees at starting point of on-effort segment LongStart - Longitude in decimal degrees at starting point of on-effort segment TimeEnd - Local time at end of on-effort segment LatEnd - Latitude in decimal degrees at end point of on-effort segment LongEnd - Longitude in decimal degrees at end point of on-effort segment Mode - see description in attribute table below EffType - see description in attribute table below avgSpdKt - average speed (knots) of the ship over the on-effort segment traveled avgBft - average Beaufort Sea State over the on-effort segment Other data not included here: Photos and biopsy samples were collected during some sightings. Acoustic detections were recorded from a towed hydrophone array. Sonobuoys were deployed opportunistically. Drifting Acoustic Spar Buoy Recorders (DASBRs) were deployed and recovered opportunistically. High-frequency Acoustic Recording Packages (HARPs) were recovered and redeployed off Saipan and Pagan.

Purpose

The Mariana Archipelago Cetacean Survey (MACS) 2021 project was part of the multi-year Pacific Marine Assessment Program for Protected Species (PacMAPPS) plan to conduct surveys and estimate density for cetacean species in regions of joint NOAA Fisheries, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and U.S. Navy interest.

Alternative Identifiers https://doi.org/10.82144/3c5c9a9f
https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/2240
https://www.gbif.org/dataset/4a9f6d0a-e993-4603-9cc3-a60a15860370
https://obis.org/dataset/de39d839-f402-4784-8af3-558702eac4ca
4a9f6d0a-e993-4603-9cc3-a60a15860370
https://ipt.env.duke.edu/resource?r=zd_2240