Database of Southern Alaska Killer Whale Surveys and Encounters, 2001 to 2016, Gulf Watch Alaska Pelagic Component

These data are part of the Gulf Watch Alaska (GWA), Pelagic Component of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, project numbers 12120114-M, 13120114-M, 14120114-M, 15120114-M and 16120114-M. Gulf Watch Alaska is the long-term ecosystem monitoring program of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council for the marine ecosystem affected by the 1989 oil spill. The project is a continuation of annual monitoring of AB pod and the AT1 population killer whales in Prince William Sound-Kenai Fjords. These groups of whales suffered significant losses at the time of the oil spill and have not recovered at projected rates. Monitoring of all the major pods and their current movements, range, feeding habits, and contaminant levels will help determine their vulnerability to future perturbations, including oil spills. This dataset is a database containing information from the killer whale surveys conducted from 2001 to 2016 in Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska. The native file format is a Microsoft Office Access 2007 database (12.0 6735.5000), components of which have been separated and stored in Orcadatabase_CSV_tables.zip as .csv files to ensure that the information contained within the Access database file is openly accessible to data customers. Details of killer whale surveys, and subsequent encounters are stored in the file. Stored information includes the date, time, observers, behavioral observations, samples taken, location, pods present, number of whales present, name of survey vessel, and other pertinent information.