Historical distribution of whales shown by logbook records 1785-1913 ...

• Main Author: Woolmer, Gillian
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: OBIS-SEAMAP 2023
• Subjects: Occurrence,Vessels,Sightings,whales,charts,sperm whale,humpback whale; Observation; Occurrence; Humpback Whale; Sperm whale
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.15468/jyp4fg; https://www.gbif.org/dataset/01d9d254-b18c-458e-b6e1-fc569edb7f09

Original provider: Wildlife Conservation Society Dataset credits: Wildlife Conservation Society Abstract: The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has digitally captured the Townsend Whaling Charts that were published as a series of 4 charts with the article titled "The distribution of certain whales as shown by logbook records of American whale ships" by Charles Haskins Townsend in the journal Zoologica in 1935. The 4 charts show the locations of over 50,000 captures of 4 whale species; sperm whales (36,908), right whales (8,415), humpback whales (2,883) and bowhead whales (5,114). Capture locations were transcribed from North American (“Yankee”) pelagic whale vessel log books dating from 1761 to 1920 and plotted onto nautical charts in a Mercator projection by a cartographer. Each point plotted on the charts represents the location of a whaling ship on a day when one or more whales were taken and is symbolized by month of the year using a combination of color and open and closed circles. Townsend and his ...