South Shetland Antarctic fur seal pup census

As such, this subpopulation faces a unique array of environmental and ecological challenges, harbors a disproportionately large reservoir of genetic diversity for the species, and has experienced catastrophic population decline between 2008 and 2023 (Krause et al. 2023 and references therein). Therefore, ensuring access to accurate and updated population data for SSAFS is particularly important for managers and decision makers.

Due to regular absences by foraging females throughout the breeding season, and the irregular haul out patterns of males and subadults, the most informative measure of fur seal population size is to annually count pups (Payne, 1979; Bengtson et al., 1990). This dataset consists of all known total synoptic Antarctic fur seal pup counts (i.e., live and dead pups) from the SSI during the austral summers since 1959. Counts from the subset breeding colonies at Cape Shirreff (CS, reported with standard deviation (±SD) where available) and the San Telmo Islets (STI) are also included.

Data were collected by the U.S. AMLR Program, unless otherwise indicated. Most of these annual census counts were conducted during the optimal biological window (late December and early January) when the vast majority of pups are born, but have not yet been subject to substantial mortality (Krause et al. 2022). The authors are confident that all counts included in this dataset are comparable and representative of South Shetland Antarctic fur seal population trends.

However, census dates, or at least best estimates of the census date, are included for all records for any parties wishing to apply correction factors. The data are published as a standardized Darwin Core Archive, which contains count data for SSAFS pups from the specified locations during the specified seasons. This dataset is published under the license CC0.

Please follow the guidelines from the SCAR Data Policy (SCAR, 2023) when using the data. If you have any questions regarding this dataset, please contact us via the contact information provided in the metadata or via data-biodiversity-aq@naturalsciences.be. Issues with the dataset can be reported at github.com/us-amlr/ssafs-pup-census.

This dataset is maintained by the U.S. Antarctic Marine Living Resources Program, funded by NOAA.