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Get values for various whale measurements

Source: R/parameters.R
whaleMeasurements.Rd

This uses a data frame containing information about several whale species, compiled by Alexandra Mayette and provided to Dan Kelley as a personal communication on 2026-01-28.

Usage

whaleMeasurements(species = NULL)

Arguments

species

either (1) the name of a species or (2) NULL. In the first case, the table is consulted to find a row with the given species name, and that row is returned. In the second case, the whole table is returned.

Value

The return value contains

  • name species name, as used in e.g. whaleMassFromLength().

  • Species proper species name. (This is not used in this package.)

  • length whale length in metres.

  • bone whale bone thickness in metres, measured from the centre to the sublayer.

  • sublayer thickness of sublayer in meters; this was called muscle in Mayette's document.

  • blubber whale blubber thickness in meters.

  • skin whale skin thickness in metres.

Details

There are two species in the table that are not in Mayette's table. These are "Pac. Right Whale" and "Bryde Whale". For these, Mayette has suggesting using values for the "N. Atl. Right Whale" and "Sei Whale" cases, respectively, as conditional estimates for use in this package.

Author

Dan Kelley, using data and advice from Alexandra Mayette

Examples

library(whalestrike)
# All species in database
whaleMeasurements()
#>                species                 properName length  bone sublayer blubber
#> 1           Blue Whale      Balaenoptera musculus   21.9 0.173    1.687   0.076
#> 2          Bryde Whale        Balaenoptera brydei   13.4 0.093    0.631   0.044
#> 3            Fin Whale      Balaenoptera physalus   16.9 0.144    0.714   0.058
#> 4           Gray Whale      Eschrichtius robustus   12.5 0.136    0.847   0.097
#> 5       Humpback Whale      Megaptera novaengliae   11.6 0.142    1.372   0.082
#> 6          Minke Whale Balaenoptera acutorostrata    6.7 0.078    0.313   0.033
#> 7  N. Atl. Right Whale        Eubalaena glacialis   13.8 0.143    1.325   0.163
#> 8     Pac. Right Whale         Eubalaena japonica   13.8 0.143    1.325   0.163
#> 9            Sei Whale      Balaenoptera borealis   13.4 0.093    0.631   0.044
#> 10         Sperm Whale     Physeter macrocephalus   11.8 0.164    0.810   0.115
#>     skin
#> 1  0.004
#> 2  0.002
#> 3  0.005
#> 4  0.010
#> 5  0.009
#> 6  0.003
#> 7  0.009
#> 8  0.009
#> 9  0.002
#> 10 0.004
# A particular species
whaleMeasurements("N. Atl. Right Whale")
#>               species          properName length  bone sublayer blubber  skin
#> 7 N. Atl. Right Whale Eubalaena glacialis   13.8 0.143    1.325   0.163 0.009