Satellite tracking data of white sharks in the southwest Indian Ocean (2012-2014)

These data comprise locations and individual metadata from 34 white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) instrumented March-May 2012 with telemetry devices along the coast of South Africa. These devices were SPOT5 transmitters (SPOT-257, SPOT-258; Wildlife Computers) which transmit locations via ARGOS CLS. All research methods were approved and conducted under the South African Department of Environmental Affairs: Oceans and Coasts permitting authority.

This dataset is linked to the manuscript Kock et al. 2021 "Sex and size influence the spatiotemporal distribution of white sharks, with implications for interactions with fisheries and spatial management in the southwest Indian Ocean".

The data are structured in long format, so that each row in the dataset represents an observation. The columns in the data are as follows.

DeployID: This a factor variable identifying each individual shark. It has 34 levels.

SPOT: This is a numeric variable identifying the tag number unique to each shark.

Date: This is a date variable (POSIXct) that gives the date and time of a geographic location record in UTC time.

Type: This is a character variable identifying the type of location record.

Quality: This is a character variable made up of numbers and letters giving the location error associated with each location as provided by ARGOS.

Latitude: This is a numeric variable and gives the latitude of the shark at the time of each record.

Longitude: This is a numeric variable and gives the longitude of the shark at the time of each record.

Area_tagged: This is a character variable that gives the area where the shark was tagged.

Sex: This is a character variable identifying the sex of the shark, either "F" or "M" for female and male.

TL: This is a numeric variable giving the total length of the shark in centimetres.

Maturity: This is a character variable giving the maturity of the shark based on its total length following Malcolm et al. 2001: juveniles (male and female: 175-300 cm TL), sub-adults (male: >300-360 cm TL; females: >300-480 cm TL) and adults (male: >360 cm TL; female: >480 cm TL).