Harbour seal line transect data

Harbour seal line transect data
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Data used in paper "Mixture models for distance sampling detection functions" by David L. Miller and Len Thomas. Taken from Williams and Thomas (2007) and were provided by Rob Williams.

Data are line transect observations of 232 harbour seal clusters in water (Phoca vitulina) in British Columbia.

Survey details
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Survey design and protocol are detailed in Thomas et al 2007. Multi-species small boat surveys were conducted along the coastline of British Columbia, Canada during the summers of 2004 and 2005.

Note that the data analysed in Williams and Thomas (2007) included harbour seals that were hauled-out as well as in water, we do not include the hauled-out animals here.

Data format
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Comma separated value file with one row for each of the 232 observations, each with the following 3 columns:

distance : Exact perpendicular distances to observed harbour seals in metres.
object : Unique observation identifier.
detected : Column of 1s indicated that the individual was observed (needed for analysis software).

References
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Williams, R, and L Thomas. Distribution and Abundance of Marine Mammals in the Coastal Waters of British Columbia, Canada. Journal of Cetacean Research and Management 9, no. 1 (2007): 15.

Thomas, L, R Williams, and D Sandilands. Designing Line Transect Surveys for Complex Survey Regions. Journal of Cetacean Research and Management 9, no. 1 (2007): 1.