Data Assembly Center Research Articles

A biologging database of mobulid rays from the Gulf of California, Mexico

We initiated a tagging program in 2004 to determine the large-scale and long-term movement patterns of three species of Mobulid Ray (Mobula mobular, M. munkiana, M. thurstoni). Between 2004 and 2014 we deployed 48 pop-up archival (PAT) tags that recorded temperature, pressure, and light level. Pressure and light level records were then used to calculate animal depth and geolocation. Transmitted and when available recovered raw data files from successful deployments (n = 45) were auto-ingested from the manufacturer into the United States Animal Telemetry Network’s (ATN) Data Assembly Center (DAC). Through the ATN DAC, all necessary metadata were compiled, dataset was prepped for release, and derived geolocation trajectories (n = 43) were visualized within their public facing data portal. These data and the full metadata records are available for download from the ATN portal as well as permanently archived under the DataONE Research Workspace member node.

A biologging database of juvenile white sharks from the northeast Pacific

Species occurrence records are vital data streams in marine conservation with a wide range of important applications. From 2001–2020, the Monterey Bay Aquarium led an international research collaboration to understand the life cycle, ecology, and behavior of white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) in the southern California Current. The collaboration was devoted to tagging juveniles with animal-borne sensors, also known as biologging. Here we report the full data records from 59 pop-up archival (PAT) and 20 smart position and temperature transmitting (SPOT) tags that variously recorded pressure, temperature, and light-level data, and computed depth and geolocations for 63 individuals. Whether transmitted or from recovered devices, raw data files from successful deployments (n = 70) were auto-ingested from the manufacturer into the United States (US) Animal Telemetry Network’s (ATN) Data Assembly Center (DAC). There they have attributed a full suite of metadata, visualized within their public-facing data portal, compiled for permanent archive under the DataONE Research Workspace member node, and are accessible for download from the ATN data portal.

The Nippon Foundation—GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project: The Quest to See the World’s Oceans Completely Mapped by 2030

Despite many of years of mapping effort, only a small fraction of the world ocean’s seafloor has been sampled for depth, greatly limiting our ability to explore and understand critical ocean and seafloor processes. Recognizing this poor state of our knowledge of ocean depths and the critical role such knowledge plays in understanding and maintaining our planet, GEBCO and the Nippon Foundation have joined forces to establish the Nippon Foundation GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project, an international effort with the objective of facilitating the complete mapping of the world ocean by 2030. The Seabed 2030 Project will establish globally distributed regional data assembly and coordination centers (RDACCs) that will identify existing data from their assigned regions that are not currently in publicly available databases and seek to make these data available. They will develop protocols for data collection (including resolution goals) and common software and other tools to assemble and attribute appropriate metadata as they assimilate regional grids using standardized techniques. A Global Data Assembly and Coordination Center (GDACC) will integrate the regional grids into a global grid and distribute to users world-wide. The GDACC will also act as the central focal point for the coordination of common data standards and processing tools as well as the outreach coordinator for Seabed 2030 efforts. The GDACC and RDACCs will collaborate with existing data centers and bathymetric compilation efforts. Finally, the Nippon Foundation GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project will encourage and help coordinate and track new survey efforts and facilitate the development of new and innovative technologies that can increase the efficiency of seafloor mapping and thus make the ambitious goals of Seabed 2030 more likely to be achieved.

Use of Altimeter and Wind Data to Detect the Anomalous Loss of SVP-Type Drifter’s Drogue

Abstract The study presented in this paper is motivated by the unexplained time dependency of the Ekman model recently computed by Rio et al. using a dataset of “drogued” drifting buoy velocities distributed by the Surface Drifter Data Assembly Center (SD-DAC). This suspicious behavior is found to be fully explained by the presence of undrogued buoys in the drogued drifters database (Grodsky et al.). Altimeter and wind data are used to extract the direct wind slippage from the total drifting buoy velocities over the period 1993–2010. The obtained wind slippage values are then analyzed to identify probable undrogued data among the drifting buoy velocities dataset. The proportion of probable undrogued data among the drogued buoy velocities distributed by SD-DAC is found to be 48%, with an important spatial and temporal variability. When averaged over the full 1993–2010 period, the wind slippage affecting these undrogued buoy velocities reaches up to 13 cm s−1 in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. A simple procedure is applied to produce an updated dataset, including a drogue presence flag as well as a wind slippage correction. The drogued drifter data from this new dataset are finally used to estimate a new, stable over time Ekman model for the global ocean by latitudinal band and by month.

Evaluating Where and Why Drifters Die*

Abstract NOAA ’s Global Drifter Program (GDP) manages a global array of ~1250 active satellite-tracked surface drifting buoys (“drifters”) in collaboration with numerous national and international partners. To better manage the drifter array and to assess the performance of various drifter manufacturers, it is important to discriminate between drifters that cease transmitting because of internal failure and those that cease because of external factors such as running aground or being picked up. An accurate assessment of where drifters run aground would also allow the observations to be used to more accurately simulate the evolution of floating marine debris and to quantify globally which shores are most prone to the deposit of marine debris. While the drifter Data Assembly Center of the GDP provides a metadata file that includes cause of death, the identified cause for most drifters is simply “quit transmitting.” In this study it is shown that a significant fraction of these drifters likely ran aground or were picked up, and a statistical estimate that each drifter ran aground or was picked up is derived.