Hi MARMAM community,

I’m teaching a very short course on marine data science to an international group of students working in conservation, fisheries, blue economy, and governance.

Rather than only discussing concepts, I think it will be more meaningful to explore real datasets through visualizations, maps, and simple analytical outputs.

So I’m looking for marine mammal datasets to support this teaching exercise. These can be open access and already published, or datasets that have not yet been fully explored or visualized.

At a minimum, datasets should include:

• Location and date/time information
• Marine mammal species (WORMS-listed taxa preferred)
• Observations such as presence/absence, relative abundance, strandings, behaviour, or threat interactions

This may be particularly relevant for NGOs or monitoring programs that collect data but have not yet had the capacity to fully analyze or visualize it OR for academics who have already published their studies and would love to see the data used in a new, interactive way — including exploring spatial/temporal patterns, trends, and summary outputs.

Ideally, datasets would already be validated so that results are scientifically robust.

If you have datasets you would be willing and able to share, I would be very grateful.

Thank you in advance, 
Chris