A synthesized dataset of Pacific Arctic marine mammal occurrences (1860-2024).

Abstract

Data on marine mammals in the Pacific Arctic region are limited, variably collected over time and by multiple sources. Therefore, collation and synthesis of previously collected data, such as the dataset presented here, make these data more useful to researchers, managers, policy makers, and residents. This paper presents a synthesized dataset of marine mammal occurrences in the Pacific Arctic from 1860 to 2024. Specifically, the dataset focuses on occurrence records of three species - Pacific walrus (Odobenus rosmarus), spotted seal (Phoca largha), and bearded seal (Erignathus barbatus). These species were chosen because of their ecological importance to the Pacific Arctic ecosystem as well as their cultural and subsistence importance to local Indigenous communities. Data were aggregated from open-access, public online data repositories. Datasets were tidied into a standardized format and then integrated to create a singular dataset of occurrence data for these three species. The final dataset contains 36,438 presence-only occurrence points over 164 years throughout the Bering, Chukchi, and Beaufort Seas. This dataset provides stakeholders with quantitative data that can be used to evaluate spatial patterns of marine mammal species over time in the Pacific Arctic region, which can generate insights into the effects of human disturbances (e.g., shipping, resource extraction) and climate change when combined with other environmental variables.