Acoustic Recordings of Killer Whales in Prince William Sound and Kenai Fjords, 2012 to 2016, Gulf Watch Alaska Pelagic Component

• Main Authors: Matkin, Craig, Olsen, Dan
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Axiom Data Science 2019
• Subjects: Killer Whale; Orca; Alaska; Killer whale
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.24431/rw1k32r; https://search.dataone.org/#view/10.24431/rw1k32r

These data are part of the Gulf Watch Alaska (GWA), Pelagic Component of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, project numbers 12120114-M, 13120114-M, 14120114-M, 15120114-M and 16120114-M. Gulf Watch Alaska is the long-term ecosystem monitoring program of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council for the marine ecosystem affected by the 1989 oil spill. This dataset includes recordings of killer whale (Orca) vocalizations made during Spring, Summer, and Fall months from 2012-2016 in Prince William Sound and Kenai Fjords. As recordings were secondary to photo-identification, they were made opportunistically, or when behavior was observed that would be better documented with recordings.Recordings were made with Offshore Acoustics and Hi-Tec hydrophones (3-7 meters depth), Tascam DR100 Mark II and Marantz PMD671 recording devices from research vessels of 12 meters or less, with no generator noise. Recordings are stored in .wav format and have not been processed. Recordings are grouped together in five .zip files by year, with individual files labelled with a time and/or date stamp. in yyyymmdd format. Beginning in 2016, the time is also included the file name, yyyymmdd_hhmm. However, there may still be files unlabeled by time, which are appended automatically with a file number, ie. _0162. When possible, the pod is included in the file name, but these labels are for reference and may not be inclusive of all animals present.