Proceedings of 

 the United States 

 National Museum 



SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION • WASHINGTON, D.C. 



Volume 123 1967 Number 3609 



An Application of Automatic Data Processing 

 To the Study of Seabirds, I 



Numerical Coding ' 



By Warren B. King, George E. Watson, and Patrick J. Gould 



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 de- 

 rive from the data. Records of at-sea bird observations are main- 

 tained in several institutions in different countries, but most of these 

 are sor table only by hand, an exercise that is extremely time-consum- 

 ing 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. 



1 Contribution no. 22 from the Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program. 

 A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the 14th International 

 Ornithological Congress, Oxford, England, July 25, 1966. 



2 King and Gould: Department of Vertebrate Zoology; Watson: Division of 

 Birds. 



