This dataset reports observations of whale shark (Rhincodon typus) in the tropical and subtropical Atlantic Ocean. Data were obtained by the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO) observers program, and were rescaled to the resolution of the Bio-ORACLE 2.0 variables, against which they were modelled along with presences from additional online sources. Our data include both presence and surveyed absence records – i.e., places where observers were active and did not detect whale sharks – within 5 arc-minute pixels spanning the surveyed area.

The Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO) observers program places one observer on each of the commercial purse seine vessels in the industrial fleet targeting tropical tuna. The observers conduct a scientific program under the EU Data Collection Framework, to obtain direct information on bycaught species as well as the discards of target species. We recorded presence (1) and absence (0) of whale shark in each observation. We then rescaled these data to the spatial resolution of the Bio-ORACLE 2.0 maps of the predictor variables, using the R ‘raster’ package. We first selected all pixels with at least one presence, and then all remaining pixels with at least one absence point. The dataset thus includes only coordinates of surveyed pixels.

Notice that the coordinates do not mark all points with observations, or the exact locations of these points, but rather the centroids of the 5 arc-minute pixels within which we had observation data.