The effect of changing levels of scuba diver disturbance, from a low during the 2020 COVID 19 lockdown to normal levels nearly a year later (July - August 2021) on the body sizes of 6 species of marine megafauna (sharks, sea lions and rays) was sampled to test the hypothesis the megafauna community would differ between the lockdown and post-lock down period 1 year later. These data are from the period after the COVID 19 lockdown in July-August 2021. The presence and size of the megafauna w...
Show moreThe marine megafauna were readily identified as either Galapagos sharks, White tip reef sharks, Black tip sharks, Scalloped hammerhead sharks, Galapagos Sea Lions or Giant manta rays from the GoPro 7 videos. As the extended duration video cameras were set up at 12-15 m depth, a diver stretched a meters tape perpendicular to the front of the camera and signaled the distances at meter intervals from 1 to 5 meters. This defined a sampling area to count and measure any of the 6 species passing through the video recorded space. Total body lengths of megafauna were estimated within 5 cm increments by comparing them to known size indicators in the videos. These data were collected by Drs Robert Lamb, Jon Witman and Franz Smith. Rebecca Ward-Diorio worked up the data from the GoPro files. The GoPro file names are provided for reference.
Witman, J. D., Lamb, R. (2023) Body size measurements of megafauna species at 6 sites after the 2020 COVID lockdown in the Galapagos Islands from 2020-2021 (Galapagos diver disturbance project). Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO). (Version 1) Version Date 2023-10-23 [if applicable, indicate subset used]. http://lod.bco-dmo.org/id/dataset/913952 [access date]
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