Thanks for your interest in marine mammal stranding data. At this time, access to the Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program’s National Stranding Database is only granted to participants active in the national stranding network.
If you are a member of the national stranding network and require access, please work with your regional stranding coordinator to make that request. If you are not a member of the national stranding network, NOAA Fisheries can run queries of the database for you and provide the results in an Excel file.
The National Stranding Database collects the fields on the Level A Stranding Report (Download File). This form is completed for every stranded marine mammal that a member of the stranding network responds to in the United States.
To perform a query, we need to know which information and data from the Level A form you are interested in receiving—generally a date range and a geographic area, as well as species or groups of species.
An example query request would be:
Species, Date of Initial Observation, Location of Stranding, Condition at Initial Observation, Sex, Age Class, and Condition/Determination for all cetacean strandings in Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts from 2010 to 2015.
Please send database query requests to: MMHSRP.NationalDB@noaa.gov
Example Datasets
For uses of marine mammal stranding information for analyses (e.g., class projects in GIS or statistics), there are three example datasets of actual stranding data in CSV file format that can be downloaded below. These datasets represent queries of Level A form data performed from the National Stranding Database. The most recent versions were created in 2022. Use of these datasets will be the most efficient option; a request for a custom query can take weeks to months to fill. If you have any questions please contact MMHSRP.NationalDB@noaa.gov.
- West Coast California Sea Lions (2017-2018)
- East Coast Bottlenose Dolphins (2017-2019)
- Large Whales (2005-2015)
