Leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) presence locations used to generate distribution models in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean
Data files
Dec 10, 2025 version files 2.64 MB
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raw_location_data.csv
2.64 MB
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README.md
2.06 KB
Abstract
Leatherback sea turtles (Dermochelys coriaces) are a highly migratory species of great conservation concern across the globe. Determining their distributions is important not only for establishing baselines to determine potential effects of altering ocean conditions but also for predicting potential interactions with anthropogenic activities. Here, we assembled a dataset of 82,963 ARGOS and FASTloc GPS locations from 75 leatherbacks tagged with satellite transmitters off the east coast of the United States between 2017 and 2024. These locations have been filtered to exclude instances where the tag prematurely detached.
Dataset DOI: 10.5061/dryad.dncjsxmb6
Description of the data and file structure
This dataset contains raw Argos and Fastloc GPS locations of leatherback sea turtles tagged with satellite transmitters off the east coast of the United States between 2017 and 2024. We have rounded the latitude and longitude to the nearest 0.1 decimal degree, as well as rounded the datetime stamp to the year, to reduce any potential adverse impacts to conservation efforts or introduce unintended risk to this population.
Files and variables
The raw location data are provided as a .csv file named "raw_location_data.csv" which can be read and further processed in R to estimate true locations using continuous time correlated random walks (i.,e. R package aniMotum), and subsequently joining environmental data for assembling species distribution models.
The file has X columns:
- DeployID: Identification number of the satellite transmitter
- Year - Year in which the location was recorded.
- Type - How locations were derived: User (indicates tagging location), Argos, or Fastloc GPS.
- Quality - Quality classes of locations. Argos location quality classes include Z, B, A, 0, 1, 2, 3, while Fastloc GPS locations include 4-9, which coordinates with the number of satellites used to estimate the GPS location.
- Latitude - Rounded to the nearest 0.1 decimal degree.
- Longitude - Rounded to the nearest 0.1 decimal degree.
Access information
Other publicly accessible locations of the data:
- These data are in the process of being made available on NOAA's National Center for Environmental Information (NCEI). This process may take up to one year. The following link provides details on the dataset and will allow users to download these data once processed (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/archive/accession/0304726).