Collated Blue Whale Data Inventory for the Gippsland Offshore Renewable Energy Area

Fifteen priority species, including Blue Whales, were identified for a rapid information exploration project related to the Gippsland offshore renewable energy declaration area. The project, conducted for the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water and NOPSEMA, inventoried publicly-available occurrence data to assess its utility for regulatory processes. This specific record describes the data inventory for Blue Whales (Balaenoptera musculus), published by the Australian Ocean Data Network and last updated in June 2026.

Use Cases

• Assess potential impacts of offshore renewable energy projects on endangered cetaceans based on the species occurrence inventory.
• Identify gaps in accessible data for regulatory decision-making based on the project's evaluation of dataset utility.
• Plan future data collection activities to improve information accessibility based on the project's identified needs.
• Support environmental impact statements for the Gippsland declaration area based on collated species data sources.

Strengths

• Focuses on 15 priority species identified by Australian regulatory bodies DCCEEW and NOPSEMA.
• Project methodology included evaluating dataset utility for specific regulatory assessments.
• Data is geospatial, relating specifically to the Gippsland offshore renewable energy declaration area.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network

Collection Method

Rapid exploration and inventory of publicly-available occurrence datasets.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06 04 09:20:36.089331; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Gippsland offshore renewable energy declaration area and adjacent Bass Strait, Australia.