Hourly summaries of quality-controlled acoustic detections for tagged marine animals across Australia's coastal waters, collected since 2007. The Integrated Marine Observing System's Animal Tracking Facility aggregates data from a permanent continental receiver network and independent research projects. This summarised dataset provides aggregated detections and mean sensor values for animals carrying multi-sensor transmitters.
Use Cases
- Meta-analysis of broad-scale animal movement patterns based on continental acoustic receiver network data.
- Studying habitat use and species distribution shifts based on long-term detection records from 2007 onward.
- Relating animal presence to environmental covariates using aggregated hourly detection and sensor data.
- Analyzing temporal activity patterns of aquatic species based on hourly resolution detection summaries.
Strengths
- Data spans from 2007 to the present, providing a long-term observational record.
- Quality-controlled according to a published methodology (Hoenner et al., 2018).
- Aggregated with hourly resolution at receiver and animal levels, providing a summarised view.
- Includes mean hourly sensor values (e.g., temperature, pressure) for animals with multi-sensor transmitters.
Limitations
- Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
- Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
Provenance
- Source
- Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) Animal Tracking Facility, via the Australian Ocean Data Network.
- Collection Method
- Acoustic detections collated from a permanent continental array of receivers and independent projects, quality-controlled and aggregated.
- Time Range
- 2007 - ongoing
- Freshness
- Updated on a six-monthly basis; last metadata update was 2026-06-04.
- Geography
- Australian coastal waters