Oceanic Society's Marine Mammal Sightings in Belize 1992 - 2011

Occurrence Observation
Latest version published by OBIS-SEAMAP on Oct 7, 2025 OBIS-SEAMAP
Home:
https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/798
Publication date:
7 October 2025
Published by:
OBIS-SEAMAP
License:
CC-BY-NC 4.0

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 445 records in English (45 KB) - Update frequency: annually
Metadata as an EML file download in English (15 KB)
Metadata as an RTF file download in English (13 KB)

Description

Original provider: Oceanic Society Dataset credits: Oceanic Society, CUNY Hunter College Abstract: In 1992 Oceanic Society began a study aimed at documenting the abundance, distribution, and behavioral ecology of bottlenose dolphins (<i>Tursiops truncatus</i>) in Belize. Our study site is Turneffe Atoll, a non-volcanic carribbean atoll ~40km east of Belize City with more than 200 mangrove cayes and surrounded by fringing coral reef. The atoll encloses a brackish lagoon whose shallow waters are the home to a population of bottlenose dolphins. To date more than a 175 dolphins have been identified in this region through photo-identification methods on surveys and follows. Studies on their abundance and distribution, habitat use, side-fidelity, and social affiliations have been conducted over the years since our work began.<br><br> From 1997 to 2001 researchers at OS conducted a study of the population of bottlenose dolphins located at the Drowned Cayes 8 km off the coast of Belize City. The close proximity of these regions suggested the possibility of overlap, yet only 3 were matched to both sites spurring more questions about the home ranges of dolphin populations in Belize. All research is conducted from small boats inside the atoll.

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 445 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:

Ramos, E. 2012. Oceanic Society's Marine Mammal Sightings in Belize 1992 - 2011. Version 1.0.0. Dataset published in OBIS-SEAMAP. https://doi.org/10.82144/5059bd0b.

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: 4882feee-cd07-447e-8203-2d1bcee5811a.  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; Bottlenose Dolphins; Marine Mammals; Occurrence

External data

The resource data is also available in other formats

OBIS-SEAMAP Dataset Page https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/798 UTF-8 Interactive map
FGDC Metadata https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/798/fgdc UTF-8 XML
EML Metadata https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/798/eml UTF-8 XML

Contacts

Eric Ramos
  • Owner ●
  • Originator ●
  • Point Of Contact
  • Primary contact
The Graduate Center, City University of New York & Fundación Internacional para la Naturaleza y la Sostenibilidad
OBIS-SEAMAP
  • Metadata Provider ●
  • Distributor
Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab, Duke University
  • A328 LSRC building
27708 Durham
NC
US

Geographic Coverage

Eastern Pacific

Bounding Coordinates South West [17.147, -88.143], North East [17.613, 17.613]

Taxonomic Coverage

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

Species Globicephala macrorhynchus (Short-finned pilot whale), Tursiops truncatus (Common bottlenose dolphin)
Subspecies Trichechus manatus manatus (Antillean manatee)

Temporal Coverage

Start Date / End Date 2000-01-30 / 2011-07-28

Project Data

No Description available

Title Oceanic Society's Marine Mammal Sightings in Belize 1992 - 2011
Funding NA

The personnel involved in the project:

Eric Ramos
  • Owner

Sampling Methods

NA

Study Extent NA

Method step description:

  1. NA

Collection Data

Collection Name zd_798
Collection Identifier zd_798
Parent Collection Identifier OBIS-SEAMAP

Bibliographic Citations

  1. Campbell, G.S., B.A. Bilgre and R.H. Defran. 2002. Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) in Turneffe Atoll, Belize: Occurrence, site fidelity, group size, and abundance. Aquatic Mammals28(2):170-180. http://www.oceanicsociety.org/sites/default/files/Campbell,%20Bilgre,%20and%20Defran%202002%20-%20Bottlenose%20dolphins%20(Tursiops%20truncatus)%20in%20Turneffe%20Atoll,%20Belize%20-%20occurence,%20side%20fidelity,%20group%20size,%20and%20abundance.pdf