Sea Mammal Research Unit (SMRU) grey seal pup contaminants

• Availability: Not released
• Published by: Marine Environmental Data & Information Network
• Last updated: 03 October 2017
• Topic: Not added
• Licence: Other Licence ; View licence information

Summary

The data set comprises measurements of contaminant concentrations in the blubber of grey seal pups. Samples were collected on the Isle of May, Firth of Forth, East Scotland between 13 November and 02 December 2002. Sixty suckling pups were selected at random from the island's population, weighed, measured and tagged. Pups were recaptured repeatedly before and after weaning, with weight, length and axillary girth being re-measured each time. These measurements were used to estimate blubber reserves based on mass/length, as detailed in Hall et al. (2009). Linear regression was used to derive estimates of pup mass at weaning. Blubber biopsy samples were collected from 57 of the pups when they were first recaptured after weaning. Samples were stored at -20 °C, then extracted using the Soxhlet method. Lipid content was determined gravimetrically while Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) was used to determine wet weight concentrations of contaminants per lipid proportion of the sample. A linear back calculation based on the known rate of contaminant concentration in blubber post-weaning was used to correct values to the concentration at weaning. The data were collected by researchers from the Sea Mammal Research Unit (SMRU) at the University of St Andrews and the University of Lancaster Department of Environmental Science. The data are held at the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC).

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• Added to data.gov.uk: 2018-02-06
• Access contraints: Data are freely available to all following agreement to the terms and conditions of a Data Licence
• Harvest GUID: 26dc736252c65f41ab1899c61f7b9b42
• Extent: Latitude: 57.00° to 56.00°
• Extent: Longitude: -3.00° to -2.00°
• Spatial reference system: urn:ogc:def:crs:EPSG::4326
• Dataset reference date: 2017-10-03 (publication)
• Dataset reference date: 2011-05-17 (creation)
• Dataset reference date: 2015-09-14 (revision)
• Frequency of update: asNeeded
• Responsible party: Sea Mammal Research Unit (originator); Lancaster University, Department of Environmental Science (originator); British Oceanographic Data Centre (custodian)
• ISO 19139 resource type: dataset
• Metadata language: eng
• Source Metadata: XML
• Source Metadata: HTML

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