Count data of air-breathing fauna from visual transect surveys including water temperature, time, sea and weather conditions in Shark Bay Marine Park, Western Australia from February 2008 to July 2014

This dataset provides information on the relative abundances of air breathing fauna (dugongs, dolphins, sea snakes, marine birds, and sea turtles) in the study area of the Eastern Gulf of Shark Bay, Western Australia. The dataset comprises transects that quantify animal abundances in three microhabitats (shallow seagrass banks, seagrass bank edges, and deep sandy channels). These microhabitats vary in their food supply as well as their potential to facilitate or inhibit detection and escape from predators, mainly the tiger shark (Galeocerdo cuvier). As a result these data have been used to examine risk-specific habitat use behaviors of these fauna, in addition to general abundance estimates.