Oceanographic influences on spotted seal foraging in the Bering and Chukchi Seas, between 2016-2020

Spotted seals (Phoca largha) are ice-associated seals that occur in the Pacific Arctic. Between 2016 and 2020, 23 spotted seals were equipped with satellite transmitters with conductivity, temperature, and depth sensors, which collected temperature and salinity profiles as the seals dove through the water column. This dataset includes three files: 'location', 'dive', and 'CTD'. Data within each file is collected by the transmitter, and then transmitted via the ARGOS satellite system and made available to the user. The 'location' file provides estimated seal locations and the associated time stamp. The 'dive' file provides individual dive records, including the maximum depth achieved by each dive. The 'CTD' file provides the temperature and salinity measurements that were collected at various depths for a subset of dives. Also included is five R script files, which provide code for the statistical analyses that were conducted for this project using these data files.