CS-PHOC: weekly census counts of Southern Ocean phocids at Cape Shirreff, Livingston Island

The Cape Shirreff Phocid Census (CS-PHOC) dataset is part of long-term monitoring efforts at Cape Shirreff, Livingston Island. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) United States Antarctic Marine Living Resources Program (U.S. AMLR) and the Chilean Antarctic Institute (INACH) have conducted synoptic, weekly counts of Southern Ocean phocids hauled out on Cape Shirreff during most austral summers since 1997-98. These census data, which will continue to be collected by the U.S. AMLR program and thus updated yearly, provide a rare and valuable source of information about changes in population trends and area use by Southern Ocean phocids in a climate change hot spot.
CS-PHOC is a sampling event type dataset published as open data with technical support provided by SCAR Antarctic Biodiversity Portal (biodiversity.aq) (BELSPO project RT/23/ADVANCE). This dataset is described in the paper “CS-PHOC: weekly census counts of Southern Ocean phocids at Cape Shirreff, Livingston Island” (Woodman et al., 2024).
This dataset contains records of Hydrurga leptonyx, Leptonychotes weddellii, Lobodon carcinophagus, and Mirounga leonina census counts at Cape Shirreff, Livingston Island (62.47° S, 60.77° W). All census records were collected by field biologists using binoculars during field expeditions at Cape Shirreff in the austral summers from December 1997 to February 2023.
The data is published as a standardized Darwin Core Archive, which contains presence, absence, sex and life stage of Southern Ocean phocids observed in each survey. This dataset is published under the license CC0 1.0. Please follow the guidelines from the SCAR Data Policy (SCAR, 2023) when using the data. A manuscript describing the CS-PHOC dataset is currently in review; if you are interested in the project or have any questions regarding this dataset, please contact us via the contact information provided in the metadata or via [e-mail]. Issues with dataset can be reported at https://github.com/us-amlr/cs-phoc
This dataset is part of the U.S. Antarctic Marine Living Resources program funded by NOAA.