An Application of Automatic Data Processing

Seabird distribution, abundance, and movements in the open ocean are difficult to analyze because the limited data available have been collected by various methods, the observers have varied in reliability, and the information is scattered widely. Furthermore, publication of individual sightings, except those of rare vagrants, has been at best spotty with the result that abundance information is difficult to derive from the data. Records of at-sea bird observations are maintained in several institutions in different countries, but most of these are sortable only by hand, an exercise that is extremely time-consuming and invites clerical errors when the data are considerable. As a result, few analyses have been published that involve complicated correlations of extensive distributional and environmental data, and even fewer seabird distribution maps show detailed documentation of seasonal occurrence and abundance.