Argos location data for southern right whales satellite tagged off New Zealand and South Australia

Brief description

Sixteen satellite tags were deployed on adult southern right whales. Six of these tags were deployed on adult southern right whales at the Auckland Islands (AI), New Zealand (50.5˚S 166.3˚E) between 24 July and 2 August 2009 and one tag was deployed on a sub-adult at Pirates Bay (PB), Tasmania (43.2˚S 147.9˚E) in October 2010. Nine tags were deployed on adult southern right whales at Head of the Bight (HOB), South Australia (31.5˚S 131.1˚E) on 6 and 7 September 2015. However, tag performance was highly variable. Three of the six tags deployed at the AI ceased transmitting before the individuals moved out of the winter aggregation area. No transmissions were received from a fourth tag until 39 days after deployment at which point the whale was south of Western Australia and although the tag transmitted for 22 days, there was insufficient data to interpolate a track suitable to be included in analyses. Of the nine tags deployed at HOB, three tags failed to transmit, and three tags ceased transmitting within six days.

Migratory movements from coastal calving grounds were successfully obtained for six individuals (AI=2, PB =1, HOB = 3) and detailed in the publication: Migratory movements of Southern right whales (Eubalaena australis) from Australia and New Zealand.

This file includes the following data fields -
PTT: the unique Argos identifier assigned to each satellite tag
Datetime: the date and time in gmt with the format 'yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss'
Longitude
Latitude
Quality: the Argos assigned location class (see paper for details)
Location: deployment location

Lineage

Progress Code: completed

Notes

Purpose
This dataset is comprised of the Argos locations generated by satellite tags attached to Southern right whales as described in the publication: Migratory movements of Southern right whales (Eubalaena australis) from Australia and New Zealand.