Scottish Marine and Freshwater Science Vol 7 No 24
In late 2014, observations of grey seal (Halichoerus grypus) predation on conspecifics which produced similar wounds provided a plausible alternative explanation of the likely cause of spiral lacerations. At that time there was insufficient evidence to rule out interactions with vessels as a possible cause of some of these mortalities, so the requirement to investigate the temporal and spatial overlap between seals and vessels remained.
Data and Resources
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Publisher | |
| Modified | 2020-01-07 |
| Release Date | 2016-10-24 |
| Identifier | 630bad58-7c1c-4eba-b8bd-467e7010ee10 |
| Spatial / Geographical Coverage Location | Scotland |
| Temporal Coverage | 2014-01-01 to 2015-12-31 |
| License | UK Open Government Licence (OGL) |
| Author | |
| Data Dictionary | During the two year study in 2014 and 2015, 37 Ultra High Frequency (UHF)/GPS tags were deployed on harbour seals at two different sites at Ardersier and in the Dornoch Firth. Locations from the animals were interpolated to produce regularised locations at three minute intervals. Each location was assigned a status of ‘hauled out’ (when the animal was on land), or on a ‘trip’ (when the animal was at-sea). Each trip was associated with a specific departure and destination haulout site. Trips to and from each haulout site were then combined by smoothing all locations to produce a usage surface that was weighted by the population estimate derived from the number of seals counted at that haulout site during annual aerial surveys. All haulout sites were combined to produce estimated mean and associated 95% confidence interval usage maps on a 0.5 km x 0.5 km grid in the Moray Firth. |
| Contact Name | Marine Scotland Science |
| Contact Email | |
| Public Access Level | Public |