Marine Mammal Human/Gear Interactions Data

The Southeast Fisheries Science Center Mississippi Laboratories is responsible for new gear development and testing to reduce bycatch and incidental interactions of protected species. In 2003, gear taken from a Bryde’s whale was sent for identification and to provide details on the possible origin of the interaction. This exercise prompted an initiative by the Southeast Regional Office and the SEFSC to develop a gear repository for the Southeast region. Soon thereafter a database was created to track all reported human interactions with marine mammals. Fishing gear and other articles from human interactions are collected by the Southeast Marine Mammal Stranding Network and shipped to the gear repository for analysis and archiving. The gear is reviewed by staff gear experts that have a background in the particular fishery or commercial/recreational application.

To provide data on the interactions between humans and fishing gear, and marine mammals.

Contact the individual identified as the distributor for this data set. Please include the title of the dataset and the name of the data steward when requesting a copy of this data.

There are not restrictions or legal prerequisites for accessing this data.

NOAA NMFS does not approve, recommend, or endorse any proprietary product or proprietary material mentioned in this publication. No reference shall be made to NMFS, or to this publication furnished by NMFS, in any advertising or sales promotion which would indicate or imply that NMFS approves, recommends, or endorses any proprietary product or proprietary material mentioned herein or which has as its purpose any intent to cause directly or indirectly the advertised product to be used or purchased because of this NMFS publication. NMFS is not responsible for any uses of these datasets beyond those for which they were intended, and NMFS makes no claims regarding the accuracy of any data provided by agencies or individuals outside NMFS. Acknowledgement of NOAA NMFS would be appreciated in products derived or publications generated from this data.

Principal investigators review the data for content to ensure the relevance/accuracy of data collected.

Data resides on Networked Attached Storage (NAS) environment. Security patches/updates are immediately applied to the host environment. Data is stripped/mirrored using RAID 50 technology to protect data from disk failure. Nightly backups are preformed and files are written to magnetic tape and stored in an onsite / offsite location.

Fishing gear and other articles from human interactions are collected by the Southeast Marine Mammal Stranding Network and shipped to the gear repository in at the Southeast Fisheries Science Center Mississippi Laboratories for analysis and archiving. The gear is reviewed by staff gear experts that have a background in the particular fishery or commercial/recreational application. The results are input into an Access database and then shared with the SERO for distribution.