Southern Right Whale Photo-IDs from Southwest Australia, 1991-2021

Over 2,000 opportunistically collected images of southern right whales from the southwest corner of Australia between 1991 and 2021. The data was collated by researchers, volunteer citizen scientists, and whale watch operators for a photo-identification study to evaluate abundance and movement. The project was conducted under the NESP MaC 1.22 initiative and contributed to the Australasian Right Whale Photo-Identification Catalogue.

Use Cases

• Estimate population abundance and trends based on individual whale identification over a 30-year period.
• Analyze residency patterns and site fidelity of whales in historically data-limited regions of Australia.
• Update national Biologically Important Area (BIA) classifications and conservation management plans based on new evidence of aggregation areas.
• Study connectivity between different whale aggregation areas mentioned in the description.

Strengths

• Contains over 2,000 images providing visual evidence for individual identification.
• Covers a long temporal range from 1991 to 2021, allowing for longitudinal study.
• Data was collected from multiple sources including researchers, citizen scientists, and commercial operators, suggesting varied perspectives.

Limitations

• Data collection is described as entirely opportunistic, which may introduce sampling bias.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for statistical modeling.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network (via data.gov.au), associated with the NESP report for Project 1.22.

Collection Method

Collation of opportunistic images from researchers, volunteer citizen scientists, and whale watch operators, followed by photo-identification matching.

Time Range

1991 to 2021

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-29 08:11:35.556027; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Southwest corner of Australia