Cetacean sighting records during a seismic survey in the New Caledonia Basin, Tasman Sea, 2015-6

Data Records

The data in this sampling event 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 36 records.

2 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.

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:

Peters K J, Stockin K A (2024). Cetacean sighting records during a seismic survey in the New Caledonia Basin, Tasman Sea, 2015-6. Version 1.0. Southwestern Pacific Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) Node. Samplingevent dataset. https://nzobisipt.niwa.co.nz/resource?r=cetaceans_newcaledoniabasin_2015&v=1.0

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is Southwestern Pacific Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) Node. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) License.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 8c5b8c75-ea71-43f3-ab1a-8706ab732e3b.  Southwestern Pacific Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) Node publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Ocean Biodiversity Information System.

Keywords

Occurrence; Observation

Contacts

Geographic Coverage

Tasman Sea

Taxonomic Coverage

Cetaceans (whales and dolphins)

Temporal Coverage

Sampling Methods

Cetacean surveys were completed in the southern sector of the New Caledonia Basin in the Tasman Sea to the west of New Zealand’s North Island. A total survey area coverage of 205,000 km2 was achieved, from ~200 km from New Zealand’s west coast (171.430609 E, 37.650542 S), extending 1,200 km onto the New Zealand extended continental shelf (163.322699 E, 32.446492 S). Water depth in the basin ranges from 2,000–3,500 m. The geophysical seismic survey vessel Hai Yang Shi You 718 was deployed to conduct a two-dimensional (2D) marine seismic survey between 18 December 2015 and 28 March 2016. As required under the 2013 New Zealand Code of Conduct for Minimising Acoustic Disturbance to Marine Mammals from Seismic Survey Operations, qualified and80trained marine mammal observers and passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) operators maintained a 24-hour monitoring program for cetaceans, this way serving as an opportunistic observational platform.

Method step description:

1. Visual observations were completed by two MMOs in rotating shifts (one MMO on duty at any time) during daylight hours (dawn to dusk) from the bridge, bridge deck and wings of the seismic vessel, providing 360° visibility of the area at a height of 16.5 m above sea level. Observers predominantly scanned the area for cetaceans with the naked eye but used binoculars (7 x 50 magnification) to search the horizon and to determine species and estimate group size. When cetaceans were sighted, observers estimated the radial sighting distance to the animal(s) using the binoculars’ reticules following (Lerczak and Hobbs 1998). Time of day, GPS position, water depth and species were further recorded. Species determination included an indication of observer confidence ranging between ‘certain’ (100%), ‘probable’ (75%) and ‘possible’ (50%).
2. In addition to the visual observations, passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) was conducted continuously by two experienced PAM operators during the entire survey (one PAM operator on duty at any time). There were three complete Seiche PAM systems onboard. Each system comprised one hydrophone array, one tow cable, one deck cable plus all electronics such as computers and audio interfaces. The towed hydrophone array consisted of four hydrophones (two low-frequency and two high-frequency) towed using a 240 m long cable at a depth of 27 m, 20 m forward of the air guns. The AD/DA audio interfaces were RME Fireface 800 - sampling rates up to 192,000 Hz (Hertz) and NI USB-6251 - sampling rates up to 500,000 Hz. At the PAM workstation, an Intel i5-3570 CPU (central processing unit), 3.40 GHz (Gigahertz) with 8 GB (Gigabyte) RAM (random access memory) was running PAMGuard version 1.14.00 Beta. This was connected to the vessel’s global positioning system (GPS) via the National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA) serial port at a baud rate of 9,600. All three hydrophone arrays were tap tested and calibrated for depth while in transit to the survey area. The final PAMGuard configuration was set to detect endemic and vagrant cetaceans using high and low frequency click detectors with respective ranges of 0–24 kHz (kilohertz) and 10 Hz–250 kHz.

Bibliographic Citations

1. Peters, K. J., & Stockin, K. A. (2022). Cetacean sighting records in the New Caledonia Basin, Tasman Sea, New Zealand. New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research, 56(1), 135–149. https://doi.org/10.1080/00288330.2020.1867201

Additional Metadata