Name: Indian River Lagoon 2021-2024 Manatee Distribution Survey Flight Path
Display Field: SurveyDate
Type: Feature Layer
Geometry Type: esriGeometryPolyline
Description: Aerial distribution surveys are used by marine mammal biologists from Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission-Fish and Wildlife Research Institute (FWC-FWRI) and other agencies to determine the seasonal distribution of manatees. Most surveys are conducted from small, four-seat, high-winged airplanes (Cessna 172 or 182) flying at a height of 500-1000 ft at a speed of 70-90 kts. This survey was conducted by three aircraft mostly following historical flight paths used for past county-wide distribution surveys. However, some changes were made to shorten the flight route or to cover areas not flown in previous paths. Flight paths generally curved parallel to the shoreline, and the airplane circled when manatees were spotted until a count of the number of animals in each group was obtained. Circling was limited to 3 passes unless a group was unusually large and aerial photos were used in some cases to confirm counts. Sightings data were recorded on paper maps and entered into a GIS shapefile for spatial analysis using NAIP 2019 imagery and recorded flight paths as a reference. GIS is a computer software system for representing data spatially and for conducting spatial analyses. This dataset includes recorded flight paths from 21 surveys flown on the following dates: 21 Oct 2021; 16 Dec 2021; 14 Jan 2022; 20 and 21 Feb 2022; 20 and 21 March 2022; 23 May 2022; 09 and 12 Aug 2022; 16 and 17 Oct 2022; 9, 10, and 11 Dec 2022; 20 Jan 2023; 13 and 14 Feb 2023; 22, 23, and 24 March 2023; 9 and 10 May 2023; 21 and 22 August 2023; 9, 10, and 14 October 2023; 19 and 20 December 2023; 10 and 11 January 2024; 14 and 22 February 2024; 12 March 2024; 23 and 24 May 2024; 20 and 23 August 2024. For surveys that were conducted on multiple dates, the last date is recorded in the SurveyDate field. Flight path records were obtained from GPS devices or downloaded from FlightAware (https://flightaware.com) where GPS data were not available. For the 16 Dec 2021 survey, only the lower resolution flight path data from FlightAware were available for the southern survey area. For the 23 March 2023 survey, only the lower resolution flight path data from FlightAware were available for the northern survey area. For the 19 Dec 2023 survey, only the lower resolution flight path data from Flight Aware was available for a portion of the southern survey area. Tracklines are edited to remove transit and off-effort tracks.
Service Item Id: 2a116c8c639744a9981bcba6b0ddc1f4
Copyright Text: Funding for these surveys was provided by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services grant #5460. Flights were flown and data were collected by staff from Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission and Mote Marine Laboratory. Use of these data must be credited in any reports or other written publications by the following sentence: "Manatee specific data used in analyses were collected under scientific research permit #MA773494 issued to FWC-FWRI."