Visual observations recorded during two blue whale voyages in the Bonney Upwelling, south east Australia in 2012

Brief description

An outline of the blue whale voyages of 2012 can be found here:
http://www.marinemammals.gov.au/sorp/antarctic-blue-whale-project/bonney-upwelling-acoustic-testing-expeditions
with further information here:
http://www.marinemammals.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/135617/SC-64-SH11.pdf

The 'Logger' data entry system was developed by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and is a flexible system to record information during a voyage. This system was the primary data entry system for the voyage and all events were recorded in Logger’s database.

Blue whale voyage 1 datasets: 12 - 25 January 2012
Sightings from the first blue whale voyage are recorded across three access databases:
20120117LoggerFinalPart1Updated.mdb
20120121LoggerFinalPart2Updated.mdb
20120125LoggerFinalPart3Updated.mdb

These databases contain tables describing:
Comments: details additional to sightings entered or data entry omissions, time stamped (UTC)
Observer effort - codes found in lookup table, date/time in UTC
GPS data (time stamped, UTC) and heading
Lookup - contains all topic codes to apply to all other tables
Resights: resighting details for sightings already recorded, time/date in UTC, initial sighting number, blow count and notes
Cetacean sightings - date/time in UTC, sighting number, observer name, vessel, estimate of distance, bearing, heading, species code, sighting cue code, estimate of number of individuals (low, best and high), group behaviour, pod compaction, surface synchronicity and comments
Weather: Date/time in UTC, sightability, glare, sea state, wind strength, swell, weather, cloud cover, cloud height, notes


Blue whale voyage 2 datasets: 13 - 30 March 2012
GPS data is stored in the file called 'gps_meld_data_exp.csv'. This is an amalgam dataset of two GPS data streams, that has been checked and corrected (see 'Quality' for further details. Date time is stored in two formats. The first is %Y-%m-%d %H-%M-%S format, as in "2012-03-16 17:54:32". The second format is a concatenated, orderable numeric string, as in 20120316175432.

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The small file 'trip_db.csv' contains a quick reference as to when the four trips of blue whale voyage 2 started, to the minute. These times have been corrected for the minor (i.e, 2 mins 15 second) error (see 'Quality' below).

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Effort database is contained in the file 'VWhale2_database_effort_corrected.csv'. A fair amount of 'correction' has gone on with this data as there were great variations in the way different people were adding new information into Logger. Furthermore, there were 'innovations' made to the Logger system, particularly after the first couple of trips. In particular, the effort was added to Logger in the first trip was exactly as it was in the first voyage (the VL was too seasick to make any amendments). So, according to the older effort classification, effort for the *first trip* started and ended, but there were no observer rotations or notes taken as to what platform the observers were perched on. Given there was quite a bit of seasickness that first day, the only observers likely to be working would have been PE, PO and DD. These observers favoured the Fly Bridge so all sighting effort for the first trip has been allocated to these observers on the Fly Bridge.

The subsequent innovations were: observers were not told how far away a potential calling whale was. If, however, the acousticians thought that we were almost upon the animal(s), they will indicate this to the observing team.

Acoustic.search == 1 indicates when the acousticians have notified observers that there was a group of blue whales in the area.

Local.Search == 1 indicates that after an initial sighting was made, sighting effort and boat movement converted into a search to get closer to the animal(s) in order to confirm their species (not usually such a huge issue with blue whales, admittedly), group size and to get photo-ID.

FD == 1 when effort on the foredeck either started or continued.
FB == 1 when effort on the fly bridge either started or continued.

For the effort types, the effort interval is defined as the time between the row the '1' value first appears and the date/time of the next row of the similar effort type.

Index.new: Because two databases were merged to form the one effort dataset (the first trip had its own Logger MS-Access database), an overall index, Index.new, was created for continuity.
Index: Effort index as it appears in the original Logger MS-Access databases.

GpsIndex: In Logger, each Effort (or sighting) row is tagged with the accompanying GPS index number. This ties an effort event with the date/time and geographical location information displayed in the GPS data.
GPSIndex.cor: As with GpsIndex but, again, as the databases were merged, a new GPSIndex value was created (.cor == corrected) to account for this, and for the added BPM GPS data.
GpsTime: Date (only), as derived from GPS. Has been abbreviate to only date due to the joys of how Microsoft packages deal with date/time objects; full date/time value for each effort row can be derived from the GPS data, via the GPSIndex.cor value
EffortNo: Each effort row has been assigned a unique number within each respective MS-Access Logger file. This is somewhat redundant with the Index value.
Local time: When Logger records an event, it also takes a date/time value from the local computer. It's not really clear to me what this value actually represents.
Observer: The head observer at the time the effort event was logged. Basically, just means the person driving the Logger computer (i.e., physically entering values and making weather obs)
Event: Each event has a unique descriptor number. See the 'Lookup' table in the MS-Access database.
Event.cor: This column should be completely ignored.
Notes: Any comments that accompanied particular effort entries. See also the Comments table for notes not specifically related to any Effort entries.
Platform: Which sighting platforms observers either started or stopped effort on, or rotated through. Unfortunately, this information wasn't always consistently recorded. See the FB and FD columns for a more correct record of when sighting effort was on and off.
Platform.cor: This column should be ignored.
Observers: All observers on rotation.
Sonobuoy: when the launching of a sonobuoy was noted in Logger, here are the numbers (this is not a complete list)
Trip: which trip it was

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Sightings for all species are given in 'sightings.csv'.

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Weather observations are in 'weather.csv'.
Recording of glare angles (i.e., start and end bearing) started on third trip.

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Comments in 'comments.csv'.
Please note there were no comments recorded during the first trip.

Lineage

Progress Code: completed

Statement: During the first two trips of blue whale voyage 2, 13 - 30 March (a trip is defined by the process of leaving and returning to port), the logging laptop was 2 mins and 15 seconds ahead of the GPS time. Therefore, the date/time stamp from the first two trips has been corrected for this slight discrepancy. All date/time values are in UTC. Also, during the second trip, the serial port between the GPS and the logging laptop was disrupted. Therefore, about 4 hours of GPS data was not recorded. To fill this in, we took four hours of another GPS series, recorded on a Blue Planet Marine GPS unit. Whether a given GPS point came from the AAD or BPM GPS units is noted in the 'data.source' column.

There are two GPS data indices in the 'gps_meld_data_exp.csv' file. The first, in the column 'Index' represents the numbering of the original GPS data streams so that one can refer back to the original GPS data if required. The other is 'Index.new', which represents a new index based on the amalgamated GPS data. It should also be noted that effort and sighting data have been corrected for this Index.new column as well.

The Blue Planet Marine GPS data has also been included in this file ('EV_GPS_logs_7Jan - 30March.xlsx'). However, please note that for 13-19 March, GPS data was exported for the time-zone that runs along the west coast of the US. Therefore, if you wish to use the BPM GPS data, these date/time data for these days needs to be _brought_forward_7 hours_ to bring it into line with UTC. GPS data after 19 March have all been exported at UTC. The remaining GPS data, that from the first blue whale voyage, namely 7-25 January, have **NOT** been checked, but there is every reason to believe that these, too, were exported at the timezone that runs along the west coast of the US.

Notes

Purpose
To begin the process of testing acoustic tracking to locate blue whales, two separate surveys were conducted off the southern coast of Australia. In particular, the surveys targeted an area called the Bonney Upwelling, in the west part of Bass Strait, which is an annual summer feeding ground (Nov to May) pygmy blue whales . The research investigated the capabilities and limitations regarding acoustic tracking of pygmy blue whales, a species that makes low-frequency vocalisations broadly similar to those of Antarctic blue whales.Two three-week long surveys, one in January and the other in March, 2012, were planned to both account for any seasonal changes in blue whale density and to allow potential improvements in the acoustics method and equipment prior to beginning the second voyage. The surveys featured both acoustic tracking and visual survey components in order to estimate the improvement to sighting rates that acoustics methods bring, in addition to a photo-ID component. These datasets comprise the data collected as part of the visual survey.