Demography and breeding biology of southern sea lions of Sea Lion Island, Falkland Islands (2013-2019)

The dataseries comprises of weekly and opportunistic cunts of the main breeding colonies of southern sea lions (Otaria byronia), which shelter at Sea Lion Island. Whenever possible, breeding events including settlement of territorial males, births, and matings have been recorded. The map of the distribution of sea lions in the breeding colony is also made by using GPS receivers. In 2016 a drone has been used to count sea lions on pictures taken from the air, and the method improved the accuracy of counts. Weekly censuses of the whole coastline of the island are carried out to record sea lion presence and ad libitum observations of sea lion are collected whenever possible. Necropsies of dead sea lions found on the beaches are also included in the work. The drone was flown over Rum Island to check sea lion presence and breeding there. A significant increase in productivity of the breeding colony from 51 pups counted in the 2013-2014 breeding season to 107 pups counted in the 2016-2017 breeding season has been observed. Only one pup was observed on Rum Island. Further information is available on the research group website, www.eleseal.org.

Data and Resources

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Additional Info

Field	Value
Last Updated	December 14, 2020, 09:55 (PST)
Created	January 30, 2020, 05:23 (PST)
Region	Falkland Islands
Language	eng
Topic Category	Biota; flora and/or fauna in natural environment
Temporal Extent Start	2013-01-01
Temporal Extent End	2019-12-31
Dataset Reference Date	2019
Lineage	Weekly counts of the main sea lion breeding colonies are carried out each season. We also carry out opportunistic counts whenever possible. The numbers of sex and age classes, focusing in particular on pups, adult females, and breeding males is taken. We record breeding events including settlement of territorial males, births, and matings. We map the distribution of sea lions in the breeding colony using navigation grade GPS receivers (accuracy about 5 meters), taking into account the offset from the operator position to the actual sea lion position. Mapping is carried in QGIS. We also do weekly survey of the whole coastline of the island, and we record sea lion presence and location, again using GPS receivers. We collect ad libitum observations of sea lion whenever possible, focusing in particular on territorial interactions between males, and mother-pup contacts. We carry out necropsies of dead sea lions found on the beaches. In 2016-2019 we flew a semi-professional drone over the main breeding colony, we took high resolution digital pictures of the sea lions, and we counted them in the pictures, obtaining a notable increase in accuracy over manual counts in some cases. We also flew our drone over Rum Island to check sea lion presence and breeding there.
West Longitude	-59.1519
South Latitude	-52.4486
East Longitude	-59.0364
North Latitude	-52.4205
Spatial Reference System	WGS84
Responsible Organisation Name	Hidden (personal data protection)
Contact Mail Address	Hidden (personal data protection)
Responsible Party Role	Hidden (personal data protection)
Access Limitations	Restricted, send data request to data owner
Use Constraints	Restricted, but open subject to limitations and prior agreement with responsible organisation. Copyright must be cited
Resource Reference	Copyright ESRG 1995-present - All Rights Reserved. Please contact ESRG before citing unpublished reports.
Data Format	csv
Update Frequency	annually
Accuracy	Accuracy of mapping by navigation grade GPS (e.g. daily mapping of males) is 5 metres. Collection of all other data is compliant to usual research standards, and a great effort is put to guarantee high repeatability of data.
Resource Type	Dataseries
Original Title	Hidden (internal use only)
Metadata Date	2019-04-03
Metadata Point of Contact	datamanager@saeri.ac.fk
Contact Consent	Contact details hidden
Unique Resource ID	FK-ESRG-387

Dataset extent

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