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Archived data
Availability: Creative Commons License This dataset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Description
To document the Grenadian marine mammal fauna and its distribution in the eastern Caribbean, we conducted field and archival studies in that country. All records of sirenians and cetaceans for Grenada were assembled and analyzed. The total number of confirmed marine mammal species for this part of the world is 11. The humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) was the most commonly reported mysticete species while a variety of odontocetes seem to be equally frequent in those waters. The manatee (Trichechus manatus) has been extinct from those waters for at least 300 years. more

Comparison with the marine mammal fauna of adjacent regions (Venezuela, Trinidad, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines), leads us to believe that at least seven additional species of cetaceans may be present in Grenadian waters, probably as occasional visitors. Purpose: There are three indications that the marine mammal fauna of Grenada may be much more abundant and diverse than ever reported. Therefore, we decided to investigate the nature of the marine mammal fauna for that country. To that end, we combined information for three major sources: data from published or unpublished (archival) documents, accounts from reliable observers, and our own field observations. As a result, we have been able to increase the number of confirmed records from three to 11. Supplemental infomation: Sightings from the field observations are a subset of the entire dataset, presented here on OBIS-SEAMAP. For records that did not have time of observation available, "00:00:00" was used and noted in the [Notes] field. For records that originally sighted a range for the number of individuals observed, the median number was used to be conservative, and noted in the [Notes] field.

Scope
Themes:
Biology > Mammals
Keywords:
Marine/Coastal, ASW, Lesser Antilles, Grenada, Cetacea

Geographical coverage
ASW, Lesser Antilles, Grenada [Marine Regions]

Temporal coverage
24 July 1999 - 28 July 1999

Taxonomic coverage
Cetacea [WoRMS]

Parameter
Occurrence of biota

Contributors
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, moredata creator
Duke University; Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences; Marine Laboratory, more

Related datasets
Published in:
OBIS-SEAMAP: Spatial Ecological Analysis of Megavertebrate Populations, more

Publication
Based on this dataset
Romero, A. et al. (2002). The marine mammals of Grenada, W.I., and their conservation status. Mammalia (Paris) 66(4): 479-494. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/mamm.2002.66.4.479, more

Dataset status: Completed
Data type: Data
Data origin: Research
Metadatarecord created: 2015-03-18
Information last updated: 2015-03-18
All data in the Integrated Marine Information System (IMIS) is subject to the VLIZ privacy policy