Abstract
BackgroundIn the French West Indies, more than 20 species of cetaceans have been observed over the last decades. The recognition of this hotspot of biodiversity of marine mammals, observed in the French Exclusive Economic Zone of the West Indies, motivated the French government to create in 2010 a marine protected area (MPA) dedicated to the conservation of marine mammals: the Agoa Sanctuary. Threats that cetacean populations face are multiple, but well-documented. Cetacean conservation can only be achieved if relevant and reliable data are available, starting by occurrence data. In the Guadeloupe Archipelago and in addition to some data collected by the Agoa Sanctuary, occurrence data are mainly available through the contribution of citizen science and of local stakeholders (i.e. non-profit organisations (NPO) and whale-watchers). However, no observation network has been coordinated and no standards exist for cetacean presence data collection and management.New informationIn recent years, several whale watchers and NPOs regularly collected cetacean observation data around the Guadeloupe Archipelago. Our objective was to gather datasets from three Guadeloupean whale watchers, two NPOs and the Agoa Sanctuary, that agreed to share their data. These heterogeneous data went through a careful process of curation and standardisation in order to create a new extended database, using a newly-designed metadata set. This aggregated dataset contains a total of 4,704 records of 21 species collected in the Guadeloupe Archipelago from 2000 to 2019. The database was called Kakila ("who is there?" in Guadeloupean Creole). The Kakila database was developed following the FAIR principles with the ultimate objective of ensuring sustainability. All these data were transferred into the PNDB repository (Pöle National de Données de Biodiversité, Biodiversity French Data Hub, https://www.pndb.fr).In the Agoa Sanctuary and surrounding waters, marine mammals have to interact with increasing anthropogenic pressure from growing human activities. In this context, the Kakila database fulfils the need for an organised system to structure marine mammal occurrences collected by multiple local stakeholders with a common objective: contribute to the knowledge and conservation of cetaceans living in the French Antilles waters. Much needed data analysis will enable us to identify high cetacean presence areas, to document the presence of rarer species and to determine areas of possible negative interactions with anthropogenic activities.
Highlights
40% of the world’s human population live within 100 km of a coast*1 and its growth is putting an unprecedented pressure on coastal and marine ecosystems and their organisms (Burke et al 2001, Halpern et al 2015)
The data acquired by citizen science can be opportunistic and heterogeneous, it has been shown that it can reveal the same trends as those highlighted by data obtained through scientific surveys (Harvey et al 2018, Jung et al 2009, Stelle 2017, Van Strien et al 2013)
This is especially true for the marine megafauna, whose observation and species identification require a huge amount of time spent at sea by researchers and marine biologists, for performing accurate identifications
Summary
40% of the world’s human population live within 100 km of a coast*1 and its growth is putting an unprecedented pressure on coastal and marine ecosystems and their organisms (Burke et al 2001, Halpern et al 2015). Scientific surveys generally require costly human and financial resources to implement the sampling protocols that are required to estimate robust relative abundance and density of cetacean species at sufficiently fine spatial and temporal scales (Laran et al 2017, Pennino et al 2017, Rone et al 2016). To address these constraints, complementary methods are needed to extend spatial and temporal coverage and to collect additional data. No observation network has been coordinated and no standards exist for cetacean presence data collection and management
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