The 1990 ANARE expedition was the first to winter on Heard Island since 1954, focusing on the potential competition between Antarctic Fur Seals and commercial fisheries. Edited by Ken Green, the report details the seals' winter diet, feeding areas, and historical Soviet fishery catches around the Iles Kerguelen region. It includes data on fish species, catch tonnage, and population trends for the exponentially increasing seal colony.
Use Cases
- Modeling population growth of Antarctic Fur Seals based on the described exponential increase.
- Assessing historical commercial fishery impact using the reported Soviet catch data from 1979-1988.
- Studying seasonal diet shifts of seals based on the analysis of winter versus summer prey composition.
- Evaluating potential competition for fish resources between seals and fisheries using the reported size classes of targeted fish.
Strengths
- Provides specific historical catch data, such as an average of 20,000 tonnes per year between 1979 and 1986.
- Documents a unique temporal event: the first extended autumn/winter presence on Heard Island since the 1840s-1920s sealing era.
- Includes concrete biological metrics, such as the bulk of seal summer diet consisting of icefish less than 240 mm in length.
Limitations
- Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
- Last updated 1990-06-17 23:59:59.999000; freshness should be verified.
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
Provenance
- Source
- AU_AADC (Australian Antarctic Data Centre)
- Collection Method
- Scanned copy of an expedition report.
- Time Range
- Focuses on the 1990 expedition, with references to data from 1840s-1920s, 1954, 1970s-1988.
- Freshness
- 1990-06-17 23:59:59.999000
- Geography
- Heard Island, Iles Kerguelen region, Southern Ocean.