Visual observations recorded during the Antarctic blue whale voyage to the Southern Ocean 2013

The ‘Logger’ data entry system was developed by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and is a flexible system to record information during a voyage. This system was the primary data entry system for the voyage and all events were recorded in Logger’s database.

The logger access database contains all data collected throughout the Antarctic blue whale voyage related to: Observer effort (effort status, event, number of observers and locations, ship guide and data logger) Cetacean sightings and resightings (time, sighting number, sighting platform, estimate distance, binocular reticles, angle, species, sighting cue, heading, estimate of number of individuals, observer of sighting, behaviour, pod compaction, comments) Sonobuoy deployments (time, sonobuoy number, notes) Environmental observations (sightability, sea state, swell, weather, cloud cover, visibility, intensity, glare, ice, sea surface temperature) GPS data (time indexed NMEA feed) CTD deployments (time, notes) Biopsy events (time, success, sample number, reaction, attempts, dart recovery, notes)