Data for: Evidence of environmental niche separation among threatened mobulid rays in Aotearoa New Zealand: Insights from species distribution modelling. Journal of Biogeography.

Mobula birostris (oceanic manta ray) dataset, Mobula mobular (spinetail devil ray) dataset and environmental data used for the publication "Evidence of environmental niche separation among threatened mobulid rays in Aotearoa New Zealand: Insights from species distribution modeling" in the Journal of Biogeography. The study looked at the spatial and temporal distribution of mobulid rays (M. birostris and M. mobular) on the northeastern shelf of the North Island over a study period that spanned almost two-decades.

Data for M. birostris (n = 366) were collecting by a combined effort from Manta Watch Aotearoa New Zealand and citizen scientists and contains geographic coordinates (in ESPG: 4326 and 2193), year, month and day of observation. Records from the dataset that were missing coordinates or an approximate date reference (month and year) were removed. Points with positional errors (i.e., on land) were also removed. Data for M. mobular (n = 285) was obtained from the New Zealand Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) Centralised Observer Database (COD) for observer reported captures from 2004 to 2021 and Non-Fish Protected Species Catch Returns (NFPS) for commercial captures from 2008 to 2021. All records were obtained from purse seine fisheries between December and April. Mobula mobular data is classified as commercially sensitive due to the presence of sensitive fishery information. Therefore, to ensure industry sustainability and balance between sharing information only vessel key, catch year and geographic coordinates (in ESPG: 4326 and 2193) is included. All purse seine catch from 2004 to 2021 is also included, used as absence data for the spinetail devil ray model in the publication. The same is true for this data where only vessel key, catch year and geographic coordinates (in ESPG: 4326 and 2193) is included.

Environmental data used in the paper is also included. Variables include: Chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) (Gall et al., 2022), Sea surface temperature (SST) (Gall et al., 2022), Chl-a gradient (Pinkerton et al., 2020), SST gradient (Pinkerton et al., 2020), slope (calculated from Mitchell et al., 2012), distance to 200m isobath (dist200) (calculated from Mitchell et al., 2012), distance to coast (distcoast) (calculated from Land Information New Zealand).

For dynamic variables, the name of the variable denotes the species (DEVIL or MANTA) and the duration of the study period. Each .RData file is saved as a list where each object is a annual layer that is a raster layer which only includes the months where a presence of the given species was present. Records from the dataset that were missing (i.e., cloud cover) were removed.