Dataset: Body sizes of megafauna species at six sites during the COVID lockdown in the Galapagos Islands during 2020

The marine megafauna were readily identified as either Galapagos sharks, White tip reef sharks, Black tip sharks, Scalloped hammerhead sharks, Galapagos Sea Lions or Giant manta rays from the GoPro 7 videos. As the extended duration video cameras were set up at 12-15 m depth, a diver stretched a meters tape perpendicular to the front of the camera and signaled the distances at meter intervals from 1 to 5 meters. This defined a sampling area to count and measure any of the 6 species passing through the video recorded space. Total body lengths of megafauna were estimated within 5 cm increments by comparing them to known size indicators in the videos.  These data were collected by Drs Robert Lamb, Jon Witman and Franz Smith. Rebecca Ward-Diorio worked up the data from the GoPro files.  The GoPro file names are provided for reference.

 

Species Code	Scientific Name	Common Name
CAGA	Carcharhinus galapagensis	Galapagos shark
TROB	Triaenodon obesus	White-tip reef shark
CALI	Carcharhinus limbatus	Blacktip shark
SPLE	Sphyrna lewini	Scalloped hammerhead shark
ZACA	Zalophus wollebaeki	Galapagos sea lion
TAME	Mobula birostris	Giant manta ray

 

Site Name	Latitude	Longitude
Baltra	-0.411553	-90.274449
Champion	-1.236830	-90.384980
Daphne	-0.394460	-90.353750
Gardner	-1.328790	-90.294290
Gordon	-0.565962	-90.140650
Seymour	-0.397600	-90.277000