SIO Marine Bird and Mammal Survey 2003

Original provider:
David Hyrenbach

Dataset credits:
National Science Foundation

Abstract:
In January 2003, investigators from Duke Marine Lab (David Hyrenbach) and CUNY-Staten Island (Richard Veit) embarked on a research cruise spanning the Southern Indian Ocean, from La Reunion Island, to the French territories of Crozet, Kerguelen and Amsterdam, and finishing in Perth, Western Australia. During this cruise, we surveyed marine birds and mammals across a large-scale gradient of ocean productivity and water mass characteristics, spanning from tropical to sub-Antarctic waters (from 21 to 49 degrees S).

Purpose:
This cruise is part of an interdisciplinary project, in collaboration with George Hunt (University of California at Irvine), Henri Weimerskirch (CNRS-CEBC), and Nicolas Metzl (Institut Pierre Simon Laplace), to understand the way oceanographic variability influences the dispersion and community structure of upper-trophic marine predators in the Southern Indian Ocean.

Supplemental information:
The data presented here are marine bird and mammal counts averaged into contiguous 9-km transects.

This cruise, was funded and supported by the following agencies:

The U.S. National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs (http://www.nsf.gov/home/polar/), the French Polar Institute (http://www.ifremer.fr/ifrtp/), and the French Ocean Indien Service 'Observation(http://www.ipsl.jussieu.fr/services/Observations/fr/OISO.htm).