Sizing Ocean Giants

Craig McClain1, Kevin Mackay2, Meghan A. Balk3, Mark C. Benfield4, Trevor A. Branch5, Catherine Chen1, James Cosgrove6, Alistair D. M. Dove7, Lindsay C. Gaskins1, Rebecca R. Helm8, Frederick G. Hochberg9, Frank B. Lee1, Andrea Marshall10, Steven E. McMurray11, Caroline Schanche1, Shane N. Stone1, Andrew D. Thaler12

1 Department of Biology, Duke University, Durham, United States; 2 NIWA, Private Bag 14-901, 6241, Kilbirnie, New Zealand; 3 Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, United States; 4 Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, United States; 5 School of Aquatic & Fishery Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, United States; 6 Natural History Section, Royal British Columbia Museum, Victoria, Canada; 7 Georgia Aquarium, Atlanta, United States; 8 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Brown University, Providence, United States; 9 Department of Invertebrate Zoology, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, Santa Barbara, United States; 10 Marine Megafauna Foundation, Truckee, United States; 11 Department of Biology and Marine Biology, University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington, United States; 12 Blackbeard Biologic: Science and Environmental Advisors, Vallejo, United States

Corresponding author(s): Craig McClain, Kevin Mackay

Received {date}; Revised {date}; Accepted {date}; Published {date}

Citation: Combination of authors, year of data paper publication (in parentheses), Title, Journal Name, Volume, Issue number (in parentheses), and doi of the data paper.

Resource Citation

McClain CR, Balk MA, Benfield MC, Branch TA, Chen C, Cosgrove J, Dove ADM, Gaskins LC, Helm R, Hochberg FG, Lee FB, Marshall A, McMurray SE, Schanche C, Stone SN, Thaler AD (2015) Data from: Sizing ocean giants: patterns of intraspecific size variation in marine megafauna. Southwestern Pacific OBIS, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), Wellington, New Zealand, 4563 records, Online http://nzobisipt.niwa.co.nz/resource.do?r=sizinggiants released on February 1, 2017.

Abstract

What are the greatest sizes that the largest marine megafauna obtain? This is a simple question with a difficult and complex answer. Many of the largest-sized species occur in the world’s oceans. For many of these, rarity, remoteness, and quite simply the logistics of measuring these giants has made obtaining accurate size measurements difficult. Inaccurate reports of maximum sizes run rampant through the scientific literature and popular media. Moreover, how intraspecific variation in the body sizes of these animals relates to sex, population structure, the environment, and interactions with humans remains underappreciated. Here, we review and analyze body size for 25 ocean giants ranging across the animal kingdom. For each taxon we document body size for the largest known marine species of several clades. We also analyze intraspecific variation and identify the largest known individuals for each species. Where data allows, we analyze spatial and temporal intraspecific size variation. We also provide allometric scaling equations between different size measurements as resources to other researchers. In some cases, the lack of data prevents us from fully examining these topics and instead we specifically highlight these deficiencies and the barriers that exist for data collection. Overall, we found considerable variability in intraspecific size distributions from strongly left- to strongly right-skewed. We provide several allometric equations that allow for estimation of total lengths and weights from more easily obtained measurements. In several cases, we also quantify considerable geographic variation and decreases in size likely attributed to humans.

Keywords: Occurrence, Observation

General description

Additional information: marine, harvested by iOBIS

Data published through GBIF: https://nzobisipt.niwa.co.nz/resource?r=sizinggiants

Taxonomic coverage

Taxonomic ranks
Species: Architeuthis dux, Enteroctopus dofleini, Cetorhinus maximus, Dermochelys coriacea, Bathynomus giganteus, Mola mola

Spatial coverage

General spatial coverage: Global extent
Coordinates: 61°55'48''S and 60°53'60''N Latitude; 178°19'48''W and 178°1'19.2''E Longitude 

Datasets

Dataset description
Object name: Darwin Core Archive Sizing Ocean Giants
Character encoding: UTF-8
Format name: Darwin Core Archive format
Format version: 1.0
Distribution: https://nzobisipt.niwa.co.nz/archive.do?r=sizinggiants
Publication date of data: 2018-08-08
Language: English
Licences of use: Public Domain (CC0 1.0)

Metadata language: English
Date of metadata creation: 2015-07-02
Hierarchy level: Dataset

References
McClain CR, Balk MA, Benfield MC, Branch TA, Chen C, Cosgrove J, Dove ADM, Gaskins LC, Helm R, Hochberg FG, Lee FB, Marshall A, McMurray SE, Schanche C, Stone SN, Thaler AD (2015) Sizing ocean giants: patterns of intraspecific size variation in marine megafauna. Peer J 3: e715. doi:10.5061/dryad.411mv
McClain CR, Balk MA, Benfield MC, Branch TA, Chen C, Cosgrove J, Dove ADM, Gaskins LC, Helm R, Hochberg FG, Lee FB, Marshall A, McMurray SE, Schanche C, Stone SN, Thaler AD (2015) Data from: Sizing ocean giants: patterns of intraspecific size variation in marine megafauna. Dryad Digital Repository. http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.411mv