North Pacific Right Whale Aerial Surveys in the Bering Sea

Aerial surveys document marine mammal sightings in the North Aleutian Basin and southeastern Bering Sea from July to August in 2008 and 2009. The dataset contains records of 387 total sightings across 13 species, with specific focus on the endangered North Pacific right whale, of which 10 unique individuals were identified. Surveys were conducted by the National Marine Mammal Laboratory under an inter-agency agreement with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

Use Cases

• Analyzing spatial distribution of 13 marine mammal species using sighting location data.
• Studying North Pacific right whale population dynamics through photo-identification of 10 unique individuals.
• Comparing broadscale (2008) and finescale (2009) survey methodologies for marine mammal density estimation.
• Assessing marine mammal presence in relation to critical habitat for environmental management.

Strengths

• Dataset covers a significant survey effort of 8,411 nautical miles (15,582 km) on-effort across two years.
• Includes detailed species counts, with 263 sightings of 11 species in 2008 and 124 sightings of 3 species in 2009.
• Provides individual-level data for endangered right whales, with 33 sightings and 10 unique individuals photo-identified.
• Cross-platform presence on NASA Earthdata and Data.gov indicates established importance and curation.

Limitations

• Specific column names and data structure are unknown from all provided sources.
• Conflicting last update dates exist: one source lists 2026-04-01, another lists 2009-08 -25.
• The dataset's license, author, and exact row count are not specified.

Provenance

Source

National Marine Mammal Laboratory, Alaska Fisheries Science Center, NOAA NCEI.

Collection Method

Aerial visual and acoustic surveys conducted from an Aerocommander 690A aircraft.

Time Range

2008-07-24 to 2009-08-25

Freshness

2026-04-01 15:08:56.502107

Geography

North Aleutian Basin and southeastern Bering Sea, from Bristol Bay west to the Pribilof Islands.