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NEFSC Survey 1991
Contact: Palka, Debra

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Availability: Creative Commons License This dataset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Description
Ship surveys on harbor porpoises in the Gulf of Maine - Bay of Fundy - Nova Scotia area during summer 1991. more

Two ship surveys were performed simultaneously. The primary survey, using the 106 foot RV/ Abel-J, was from 22 July 1991 to 30 August 1991, starting and ending in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The study area, covering approximately 13,300 nm2, was from Port Clyde, Maine to St. John, New Brunswick over to the Nova Scotian coast, up to Liverpool, Nova Scotia, Canada. The supplementary survey, using the 48 foot MV/ Sneak Attack, was from 3 August to 22 August, 1991. Their study area was the inland bays from Penobscot Bay, Maine to Machais Bay, Maine, United States. Purpose The primary objectives were: 1) Estimate the abundance of harbor porpoises in the Gulf of Maine - Bay of Fundy - Nova Scotia area, and 2) Investigate if there are any spatial distribution patterns of the harbor porpoises, and if those patterns are correlated with water depth or harbor porpoise group size. Secondary objectives were: 1) Estimate the abundance and spatial distribution of other cetaceans, 2) Determine if harbor porpoise avoid this ship, and if so, at what distance, 3) Determine if there is a spatial distribution pattern of mother-calf pairs of harbor porpoise, 4) Compare the abundance estimate and spatial distribution of harbor porpoise as seen this year with that seen in previous years, 5) Investigate if inland bays can be surveyed using a rigid-hull inflatable boat as the observation platform in a line transect survey, and 6) Determine if Buckland's sighting procedure (1991), which is a line transect survey using both a primary and marking team, is a feasible procedure to estimate the abundance of harbor porpoise in the Bay of Fundy area.

Scope
Themes:
Biology > Mammals
Keywords:
Marine/Coastal, A, North Atlantic, Mammalia

Geographical coverage
A, North Atlantic [Marine Regions]

Temporal coverage
13 October 1991 - 24 October 1991

Taxonomic coverage
Mammalia [WoRMS]

Contributors
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), moredata owner

Related datasets
Published in:
OBIS-SEAMAP: Spatial Ecological Analysis of Megavertebrate Populations, more

URLs

Dataset status: Completed
Data type: Data
Data origin: Research
Metadatarecord created: 2012-11-12
Information last updated: 2012-11-12
All data in the Integrated Marine Information System (IMIS) is subject to the VLIZ privacy policy