Grey and Harbour Seal Usage Maps

• Main Author: Brookes Kate
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Marine Scotland Science 2013
• Subjects: Seal abundance; harbour seal; Phoca vitulina
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.7489/1672-1; https://data.marine.gov.scot/dataset/grey-and-harbour-seal-usage-maps

The seal usage maps and report have been produced by SMRU as a deliverable of the Scottish Government Marine Mammal Scientific Support Research Programme (MMSS/001/11 ). The Maps are produced by looking at movement patterns from electronically tagged seals. The resulting patterns of usage are scaled to population levels using data collected in aerial survey counts at haul-out sites, to produce estimates of mean density (seals per 5 x 5 km grid cells). : Grey seal (Halichoerus grypus) telemetry data from 1991-2011 and harbour seal (Phoca vitulina) telemetry data from 1991-2012 were combined with haul out count data from 1988-2012 to produce UK-wide maps by species of estimated usage and associated confidence intervals. The resulting data were converted to maps on the WGS84 UTM30N projection.