Tampa Bay 2023-2024 Manatee Distribution Survey Flight Path

Aerial distribution surveys are used by marine mammal biologists from Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission-Fish and Wildlife Research Institute (FWC-FWRI) and other agencies to determine the seasonal distribution of manatees. Most surveys are conducted from small, four-seat, high-winged airplanes (Cessna 172 or 182) flying at a height of 500-1000 ft at a speed of 70-90 kts. This survey was conducted by one aircraft mostly following historical flight paths used for past county-wide distribution surveys. However, some changes have been made to shorten the flight route or to cover areas not flown in previous paths. Flight paths generally curved parallel to the shoreline, and the airplane circled when manatees were spotted until a count of the number of animals in each group was obtained. Circling was limited to 3 passes unless a group was unusually large and aerial photos may have been used in some cases to confirm counts. Sightings data were recorded on paper maps and entered into a GIS shapefile for spatial analysis using NAIP 2023 imagery and recorded flight paths as a reference. GIS is a computer software system for representing data spatially and for conducting spatial analyses. This dataset includes recorded flight paths from 24 surveys flown on the following dates: 13 September 2023, 6 and 23 October 2023, 18 and 29 November 2023; 5 and 29 December 2023; 18 and 26 January 2024; 16 and 27 February 2024; 7 and 25 March 2024; 9 and 17 April 2024; 3 and 30 May 2024; 4 and 26 June 2024; 23 and 27 July 2024; 12 and 27 August 2024; and 12 September 2024. Flight path records were obtained from GPS devices or downloaded from FlightAware (https://flightaware.com) where GPS data were not available. For the 3 May 2024 survey, only the lower resolution flight path data from FlightAware were available. Tracklines are edited to remove transit and off-effort tracks.