attention: me need your help 



have you seen any whales, porpoises, seals, or sea lions from this platform? 

 we are taking a survey of marine mammals in southern california waters, and 

 would appreciate any information on marine mammals (whales, porpoises, and 

 seals) which you have observed off the platform. if you see a whale, porpoise, 

 or seal please fill out a card as soon as possible after seeing the animal and 

 place the card in the box. these posters demonstrate how to identify the 

 common marine mammals. your information will help us to understand the 

 populations, distributions and behavior of these animals. we hope to show 

 that oil platforms are a good source of information. 



In addition, the sighting card program will be explained to the workers during 

 the in-person interviews. 



The sighting card consists of a total of 47 questions (Table 2-2) but the 

 worker does not fill them all out. He completes 16 initial questions and then 

 goes to the category of animal he saw and fills out an additional 7 to 12 

 questions. Most questions are answered by simply checking the appropriate 

 box, and the entire card takes only a couple of minutes to fill out. 



The sighting card was designed not only to extract information pertinent to 

 the NOSC program, but to act as a learning tool for the worker. As he fills 

 out the set of questions for the category of marine mammal that he saw, he 

 will learn the important characteristics in identifying these animals. Hope- 

 fully, the next time he sees a marine mammal, he will look for those 

 characteristics. 



The sighting card is designed to be readily analyzed by computer. The computer 

 can identify to species the marine mammal observed if the worker can fill out 

 most of the characteristics even if he is unable to name the species. The 

 card is also designed to double-check false identifications since the worker 

 is asked not only to put down the species he thinks he saw, but to check the 

 characteristics. 



