Seabirds at sea data

Since 1979, the Seabirds at Sea Team (SAST) has conducted numerous surveys of seabird and cetaceans at sea from ships and aircraft using standard methods.   These data are stored in a database, which to date contains data from over 750 cruises, representing transects of approximately 525,000 km in length (over 13 times around the world at the equator) with a total count of roughly 3.5 million seabirds and cetaceans.

 

In 1991, SAST formed a partnership with researchers in north-west Europe engaged in similar research to share data and co-operate in joint research projects.  Much work has been done amongst these research groups to standardise seabird and cetacean data collection methods across Europe. This resulted in a shared database managed by the JNCC on behalf of the European Seabirds at Sea Database Co-ordinating Group (ESAS) (Reid & Camphuysen 1998). Many publications have resulted from the use of these data and ESAS partners have engaged in shared projects, e.g. the the Joint Cetacean Database, Atlas of cetacean distribution in north-west European waters (Reid et al. 2003) and Atlas of seabird distribution in north-west European waters (Stone et al. 1995).

 

 

JNCC is currently working with the OBIS Seamap project (Ocean Biogeographic Information System - Spatial Ecological Analysis of Megavertebrate Populations)  to present seabirds at-sea data via their online portal.

 

If you would like to use the seabirds at-sea data managd by JNCC for a particular research project, please contact the Information Manager, .

 

Available references / outputs